EFA Global
Monitoring Report
2
0 1
3/4
TEACHING
AND LEARNING:
Summary
Achieving quality for all
United Nations
Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization
TEACHING
AND LEARNING:
Achieving quality for all
Summary
UNESCO
Publishing
United Nations
Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
This Report is an independent publication commissioned by UNESCO on behalf of the international
community. It is the product of a collaborative effort involving members of the Report Team and many
other people, agencies, institutions and governments.
The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the
expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country,
territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
The EFA Global Monitoring Report team is responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts
contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO
and do not commit the Organization. Overall responsibility for the views and opinions expressed in the
Report is taken by its Director.
The EFA Global Monitoring Report team
Director: Pauline Rose
Kwame Akyeampong, Manos Antoninis, Madeleine Barry, Nicole Bella, Erin Chemery,
Marcos Delprato, Nihan Köseleci Blanchy, Joanna Härmä, Catherine Jere, Andrew Johnston,
François Leclercq, Alasdair McWilliam, Claudine Mukizwa, Judith Randrianatoavina, Kate Redman,
Maria Rojnov-Petit, Martina Simeti, Emily Subden and Asma Zubairi.
The Education for All Global Monitoring Report is an independent annual publication. It is facilitated and
supported by UNESCO.
For more information about the Report, please contact:
EFA Global Monitoring Report team
c/o UNESCO, 7, place de Fontenoy
75352 Paris 07 SP, France
Email: [email protected]
Tel.: +33 1 45 68 07 41
www.efareport.unesco.org
Previous EFA Global Monitoring Reports
2012. Youth and skills: Putting education to work
2011. The hidden crisis:
Armed conflict and education
2010. Reaching the marginalized
2009. Overcoming inequality:
Why governance matters
2008. Education for All by 2015: Will we make it?
2007. Strong foundations:
Early childhood care and education
2006. Literacy for life
2005. Education for All: The quality imperative
2003/4. Gender and Education for All:
The leap to equality
2002. Education for All: Is the world on track?
Any errors or omissions found subsequent to printing will be corrected in the online version at www.efareport.unesco.org.
© UNESCO, 2014
All rights reserved
First edition
Published in 2014 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
7, Place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France
Cover photo by Poulomi Basu
Graphic design by FHI 360
Layout by FHI 360
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
Typeset by UNESCO
2
ED.2013/WS/29
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
SUMMARY
Foreword
This 11th EFA Global Monitoring Report provides a timely update on progress that
countries are making towards the global education goals that were agreed in
2000. It also makes a powerful case for placing education at the heart of the global
development agenda after 2015. In 2008, the EFA Global Monitoring Report asked – ‘will
we make it?’ With less than two years left before 2015, this Report makes it clear
that we will not.
Fifty-seven million children are still failing to learn, simply because they are not
in school. Access is not the only crisis – poor quality is holding back learning even
for those who make it to school. One third of primary school age children are not
learning the basics, whether they have been to school or not. To reach our goals, this
Report calls on Governments to redouble efforts to provide learning to all who face
disadvantages – whether from poverty, gender, where they live or other factors.
An education system is only as good as its teachers. Unlocking their potential is
essential to enhancing the quality of learning. Evidence shows that education quality
improves when teachers are supported – it deteriorates if they are not, contributing to
the shocking levels of youth illiteracy captured in this Report.
Governments must step up efforts to recruit an additional 1.6 million teachers to
achieve universal primary education by 2015. This Report identifies four strategies to
provide the best teachers to reach all children with a good quality education. First,
the right teachers must be selected to reflect the diversity of the children they will be
teaching. Second, teachers must be trained to support the weakest learners, starting
from the early grades. A third strategy aims to overcome inequalities in learning
by allocating the best teachers to the most challenging parts of a country. Lastly,
governments must provide teachers with the right mix of incentives to encourage them
to remain in the profession and to make sure all children are learning, regardless of
their circumstances.
But teachers cannot shoulder the responsibility alone. The Report shows also
that teachers can only shine in the right context, with well-designed curricula and
assessment strategies to improve teaching and learning.
These policy changes have a cost. This is why we need to see a dramatic shift in
funding. Basic education is currently underfunded by US$26 billion a year, while aid
is continuing to decline. At this stage, governments simply cannot afford to reduce
investment in education – nor should donors step back from their funding promises.
This calls for exploring new ways to fund urgent needs.
3
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
We must learn from the evidence as we shape a new global sustainable development
agenda after 2015. As this Report shows, equality in access and learning must stand
at the heart of future education goals. We must ensure that all children and young
people are learning the basics and that they have the opportunity to acquire the
transferable skills needed to become global citizens. We must also set goals that are
clear and measurable, to allow for the tracking and monitoring that is so essential for
governments and donors alike, and to bridge the gaps that remain.
As we advance towards 2015 and set a new agenda to follow, all governments
must invest in education as an accelerator of inclusive development. This Report’s
evidence clearly shows that education provides sustainability to progress against all
development goals. Educate mothers, and you empower women and save children’s
lives. Educate communities, and you transform societies and grow economies. This is
the message of this EFA Global Monitoring Report.
Irina Bokova
Director-General of UNESCO
4
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
SUMMARY
Introduction
With the deadline for the Education for All goals less than two years away, it is clear that, despite
advances over the past decade, not a single goal will be achieved globally by 2015. This year’s EFA Global
Monitoring Report vividly underlines the fact that people in the most marginalized groups have continued
to be denied opportunities for education over the decade. It is not too late, however, to accelerate
progress in the final stages. And it is vital to put in place a robust global post-2015 education framework
to tackle unfinished business while addressing new challenges. Post-2015 education goals will only be
achieved if they are accompanied by clear, measurable targets with indicators tracking that no one is
left behind, and if specific education financing targets for governments and aid donors are set.
The 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report is divided into three parts. Part 1 provides an update of
progress towards the six EFA goals. The second part presents clear evidence that progress in education
is vital for achieving development goals after 2015. Part 3 puts the spotlight on the importance of
implementing strong policies to unlock the potential of teachers so as to support them in overcoming
the global learning crisis.
Highlights
■■ Goal 1: Despite improvements, far too many children lack early childhood care and education. In
2012, 25% of children under 5 suffered from stunting. In 2011, around half of young children
had access to pre‑primary education, and in sub-Saharan Africa the share was only 18%.
■■ Goal 2: Universal primary education is likely to be missed by a wide margin. The number of
children out of school was 57 million in 2011, half of whom lived in conflict-affected countries.
In sub-Saharan Africa, only 23% of poor girls in rural areas were completing primary education
by the end of the decade. If recent trends in the region continue, the richest boys will achieve
universal primary completion in 2021, but the poorest girls will not catch up until 2086.
■■ Goal 3: Many adolescents lack foundation skills gained through lower secondary education. In
2011, 69 million adolescents were out of school, with little improvement in this number since
2004. In low income countries, only 37% of adolescents complete lower secondary education,
and the rate is as low as 14% for the poorest. On recent trends, girls from the poorest families
in sub-Saharan Africa are only expected to achieve lower secondary completion in 2111.
■■ Goal 4: Adult literacy has hardly improved. In 2011, there were 774 million illiterate adults, a
decline of just 1% since 2000. The number is projected to fall only slightly, to 743 million,
by 2015. Almost two-thirds of illiterate adults are women. The poorest young women in
developing countries may not achieve universal literacy until 2072.
■■ Goal 5: Gender disparities remain in many countries. Even though gender parity was supposed to
be achieved by 2005, in 2011 only 60% of countries had achieved this goal at the primary level
and 38% at the secondary level.
■■ Goal 6: Poor quality of education means millions of children are not learning the basics. Around
250 million children are not learning basic skills, even though half of them have spent at
least four years in school. The annual cost of this failure, around US$129 billion. Investing in
teachers is key: in around a third of countries, less than 75% of primary school teachers are
trained according to national standards. And in a third of countries, the challenge of training
existing teachers is worse than that of recruiting and training new teachers.
5
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Part 1: Monitoring the
Education for All goals
Since the Education for All framework was established in 2000, countries have made
progress towards the goals. However, too many will still be far from the target
in 2015 (Figure 1).
Figure 1: By 2015, many countries will still not have reached the EFA goals
Percentage of countries projected to achieve a benchmark for five EFA goals by 2015
21
12
7
10
37
25
24
21
14
9
34
16
7
7
7
48
22
10
56
Percentage of countries
very far from target
far from target
close to target
12
reached target
70
56
46
29
Pre-primary
education
Primary education
Lower secondary
education
Adult literacy
Goal 1
Goal 2
Goal 3
Goal 4
Primary education
gender parity
Lower secondary
education gender
parity
Goal 5
Notes: Countries are assessed as having reached the target if they have achieved a pre-primary education gross enrolment ratio of 80% (goal 1); a primary education adjusted net enrolment ratio
of 97% (goal 2); a lower secondary education adjusted net enrolment ratio of 97% (goal 3); an adult literacy rate of 97% (goal 4); a gender parity index between 0.97 and 1.03 at primary and lower
secondary education respectively (goal 5). The analysis was conducted on the subset of countries for which a projection was possible; therefore, it covers fewer countries than those for which
information is available on either 1999 or 2011.
Source: Bruneforth (2013).
Goal 1: Early childhood care and education
The foundations set in the first thousand days of a
child’s life, from conception to the second birthday,
are critical for future well-being. It is therefore vital
that families have access to adequate health care,
along with support to make the right choices for
mothers and babies. In addition, access to good
nutrition holds the key to developing children’s
immune systems and the cognitive abilities they
need in order to learn.
Despite improvements, an unacceptably high number
of children suffer from ill health: under-5 mortality
fell by 48% from 1990 to 2012, yet 6.6 million
children still died before their fifth birthday in 2012.
6
Progress has been slow. In 43 countries, more than
one in ten children died before age 5 in 2000. If the
annual rate of reduction for child mortality in these
43 countries between 2000 and 2011 is projected to
2015, only eight countries will reach the target of
reducing child deaths by two-thirds from their 1990
levels. Some poorer countries that invested in early
childhood interventions, including Bangladesh and
Timor-Leste, reduced child mortality by at least
two-thirds in advance of the target date.
Progress in improving child nutrition has been
considerable. Yet, as of 2012, some 162 million
children under 5 were still malnourished;
three-quarters of them live in sub-Saharan
Africa and South and West Asia. While the share
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
of children under 5 who were stunted – a robust
indicator of long-term malnutrition – was 25%,
down from 40% in 1990, the annual rate of reduction
needs to almost double if global targets are to be
achieved by 2025.
The links between early childhood care and
education are strong and mutually reinforcing.
Early childhood care and education services help
build skills at a time when children’s brains are
developing, with long-term benefits for children
from disadvantaged backgrounds. In Jamaica,
for example, infants who were stunted and from
disadvantaged backgrounds receiving weekly
psychosocial stimulation were earning 42% more
than their peers by their early 20s.
Since 2000, pre-primary education has expanded
considerably. The global pre-primary education
gross enrolment ratio increased from 33% in
1999 to 50% in 2011, although it reached only
18% in sub-Saharan Africa. The number of
children enrolled in pre-primary schools grew
by almost 60 million over the period.
In many parts of the world, however, there is a wide
gap in enrolment between the richest and poorest
(Figure 2). Part of the reason is that governments
have yet to assume sufficient responsibility for
pre-primary education: as of 2011, private providers
were catering for 33% of all enrolled children,
rising to 71% in the Arab States. The cost of private
provision is one of the factors that contribute to
inequity in access at this level.
No target was set at Dakar in 2000 to guide
assessment of success in early childhood
education. To gauge progress, this Report has
set a pre-primary education gross enrolment
ratio of 80% as an indicative target for 2015. Of the
141 countries with data, 21% had reached the target
in 1999. By 2011, the number had risen to 37%.
Looking ahead to 2015, it is projected that 48% of
countries will reach the target.
An 80% target is modest, leaving many young
children, often the most vulnerable, out of
pre-school. Any post-2015 goal must provide a
clear target to make sure all young children have
access to pre-primary education, and a way to track
the progress of disadvantaged groups to be sure
they do not miss out.
SUMMARY
Figure 2: Few poor 4-year-olds receive pre-primary education
Percentage of children aged 36 to 59 months who attended some
form of organized early childhood education programme, by wealth,
selected countries, 2005–2012
Burkina Faso
Poorest
Mean
Richest
Somalia
Yemen
Iraq
Burundi
Chad
C. A. R
Mauritania
Côte d’Ivoire
Syrian A. R.
Guinea-Bissau
Tajikistan
Bosnia/Herzeg.
Sierra Leone
Bangladesh
Zimbabwe
Gambia
Kyrgyzstan
Uzbekistan
TFYR Macedonia
Cameroon
Myanmar
Lao PDR
Vanuatu
S. Tome/Principe
Togo
Montenegro
Belize
Suriname
Kazakhstan
Albania
Nigeria
Georgia
Serbia
Guyana
Mongolia
Thailand
Ukraine
Ghana
Viet Nam
Trinidad/Tobago
0
20
40
60
Attendance rate (%)
80
100
Source: World Inequality Database on Education, www.education-inequalities.org.
7
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
SUMMARY
Goal 2: Universal primary education
With just two years until the 2015 deadline for
the Education for All goals, the goal of universal
primary education (UPE) is likely to be missed by
a wide margin. By 2011, 57 million children were
still out of school.
There is some good news: between 1999 and 2011,
the number of children out of school fell almost by
half. Following a period of stagnation, there was a
small improvement between 2010 and 2011. But
that reduction of 1.9 million is scarcely more than
a quarter of the average between 1999 and 2004.
Had the rate of decline between 1999 and 2008 been
maintained, UPE could almost have been achieved
by 2015 (Figure 3).
Sub-Saharan Africa is the region that is lagging
most behind, with 22% of the region’s primary
school age population still not in school in 2011.
By contrast, South and West Asia experienced the
fastest decline, contributing more than half the total
reduction in numbers out of school.
In 2011,
14 countries
had more
than
1 million
children out
of school
Girls make up 54% of the global population of
children out of school. In the Arab States, the
share is 60%, unchanged since 2000. In South
and West Asia, by contrast, the percentage of
girls in the out-of-school population fell steadily,
from 64% in 1999 to 57% in 2011. Almost half the
If the 1999–2008 trend
continued there would be
23 million out-of-school
children in 2015.
57
12
2014
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2001
2002
1999
0
23
30
20
2015
42
Sub-Saharan Africa
2013
40
60
2011
60
74
40
South and
West Asia
2012
80
World
2000
Number of out-of-school children (millions)
107
100
Note: The dotted line from 2008 to 2015 is based on the average annual absolute reduction in the
number of out-of-school children between 1999 and 2008.
Sources: UIS database; EFA Global Monitoring Report team calculations (2013).
8
The top three performers in the last five years
have been the Lao People’s Democratic Republic,
Rwanda and Viet Nam, which reduced their
out-of-school populations by at least 85%. There
has been little change in the list of countries with
the highest numbers of children out of school. The
top 10 was unchanged over the period with one
exception: Ghana was replaced by Yemen.
Some countries that might have been in the list
with the largest out-of-school populations are
not there simply because they have no recent
reliable data. Using household surveys, this
Report estimates that 14 countries had more than
1 million children out of school in 2011, including
Afghanistan, China, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Somalia, Sudan (pre-secession) and
the United Republic of Tanzania.
Around half the world’s out-of-school population
lives in conflict-affected countries, up from 42%
in 2008. Of the 28.5 million primary school age
children out of school in conflict-affected
countries, 95% live in low and lower middle
income countries. Girls, who make up 55% of
the total, are the worst affected.
Often children do not make it to school because of
disadvantages they are born with. One of the most
neglected disadvantages is disability. New analysis
from four countries shows that children at higher
risk of disability are far more likely to be denied a
chance to go to school, with differences widening
depending on the type of disability. In Iraq, for
instance, 10% of 6- to 9-year-olds with no risk of
disability had never been to school in 2006, but 19%
of those with a risk of hearing impairment and 51%
of those who were at higher risk of mental disability
had never been to school.
Figure 3: Millions of children remain out of school in 2011
Number of primary school age children out of school, by region,
1999–2011
120
children out of school globally are expected never
to make it to school, and the same is true for
almost two of three girls in the Arab States and
sub-Saharan Africa.
Children are more likely to complete primary
schooling if they enter at the right age. However,
the net intake rate for the first year of primary
school increased only slightly between 1999 and
2011, from 81% to 86% – and it rose by less than
one percentage point over the last four years of the
period. Some countries have made great progress
in getting children into school on time, however,
including Ethiopia, which increased its rate from
23% in 1999 to 94% in 2011.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Dropout before completing a full primary cycle has
hardly changed since 1999. In 2010, around 75%
of those who started primary school reached the
last grade. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of
those starting school who reached the last grade
worsened from 58% in 1999 to 56% in 2010; by
contrast, in the Arab States this proportion improved
from 79% in 1999 to 87% in 2010.
Universal participation in primary school is likely
to remain elusive in many countries by 2015.
Of 122 countries, the proportion reaching universal
primary enrolment rose from 30% in 1999 to 50%
in 2011. Looking ahead to 2015, it is projected that
56% of countries will reach the target. In 2015,
12% of countries will still have fewer than 8 in
10 enrolled, including two-thirds of countries in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Assessing whether UPE has been achieved should
be judged not by participation alone, but also by
whether children complete primary education.
Among the 90 countries with data, it is expected that
at least 97% of children will reach the last grade of
primary school by 2015 in just 13 countries, 10 of
which are OECD or EU member states.
SUMMARY
inequalities in completion, with rates
reaching 61% for the richest households
but 14% for the poorest.
The number of out-of-school adolescents
has fallen since 1999 by 31%, to 69 million.
However it has all but stagnated since 2007,
leaving many young people needing access to
second-chance programmes to acquire foundation
skills. Slow progress towards reducing the number
of adolescents out of school in South and West
Asia resulted in the region’s share of the total
number increasing from 39% in 1999 to 45% in
2011. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of
adolescents out of school remained at 22 million
between 1999 and 2011 as population growth
cancelled out enrolment growth (Figure 4).
In low
income
countries,
only 14% of
the poorest
complete
lower
secondary
school
Given that universal lower secondary education
is expected to become an explicit goal after 2015,
it is vital to assess where the world is likely to
stand in 2015. An assessment of progress based
on 82 countries finds that only 26% achieved
universal lower secondary education in 1999.
By 2011, 32% of countries had reached that level.
By 2015, the proportion of countries reaching that
level is expected to grow to 46%.
Goal 3: Youth and adult skills
The most effective route to acquiring foundation
skills is through lower secondary schooling. The
lower secondary gross enrolment ratio increased
from 72% to 82% over 1999–2011. The fastest
growth was in sub-Saharan Africa, where enrolment
more than doubled, albeit from a low base,
reaching 49% in 2011.
Children need to complete lower secondary
education to acquire foundation skills. Analysis
using household surveys shows that completion
rates had only reached 37% in low income
countries by around 2010. There are wide
Figure 4: The number of adolescents out of school has hardly
fallen since 2007
Out-of-school adolescents, by region, 1999 to 2011
120
Out-of-school children
107
100
Out-of-school adolescents (millions)
The third EFA goal has been one of the most
neglected, in part because no targets or indicators
were set to monitor its progress. The 2012 Report
proposed a framework for various pathways to skills
– including foundation, transferable, and technical
and vocational skills – as a way of improving
monitoring efforts, but the international community
is still a long way from measuring the acquisition of
skills systematically.
World
101
Out-of-school adolescents
80
60
73
69
57
40
South and West Asia
31
Sub-Saharan Africa
22
40
20
0
1999
22
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
Source: UIS database.
9
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
contrast, 26% of countries were very far from this
level in 2011. In 2015, 29% of countries are expected
to achieve universal adult literacy, while 37% will
still be very far.
This assessment is based on information from only
40% of all countries. It includes two-thirds of the
countries in North America and Western Europe but
only a quarter of sub-Saharan African countries,
so it is not representative. Taking into account
the countries that have not yet achieved universal
primary enrolment, the percentage of countries
that could achieve lower secondary enrolment by
2015 would be much lower.
The 15 countries of West Africa are among those
with the worst adult literacy rates globally, and
include the five countries with the world’s lowest
literacy rates, below 35%. Those five countries
also have female literacy rates below 25%,
compared with an average for sub-Saharan Africa
of 50%. These trends are not likely to improve soon.
In 12 out of the 15 countries, fewer than half of
young women are literate.
Goal 4: Adult literacy
Universal literacy is fundamental to social and
economic progress. Literacy skills are best
developed in childhood through good quality
education. Few countries offer genuine second
chances to illiterate adults. As a result, countries
with a legacy of low access to school have been
unable to eradicate adult illiteracy.
Gender parity – ensuring an equal enrolment ratio of
girls and boys – is the first step towards the fifth EFA
goal. The full goal – gender equality – also demands
appropriate schooling environments, practices free
of discrimination, and equal opportunities for boys
and girls to realize their potential.
The number of illiterate adults remains stubbornly
high at 774 million, a fall of 12% since 1990 but
just 1% since 2000. It is projected only to fall to
743 million by 2015. Ten countries are responsible
for almost three-quarters of the world’s illiterate
Gender disparity patterns vary between countries
adults (Figure 5). Women make up almost
in different income groups. Among low income
two-thirds of the total, and there has been no
countries, disparities are commonly at the
progress in reducing this share since 1990. Of the
expense of girls: 20% achieve gender parity
61 countries with data, around half are
expected to achieve gender parity in adult
Figure 5: 10 countries account for 72% of the global population of illiterate adults
literacy by 2015, and 10 will be very close.
Since 1990, adult literacy rates have risen
fastest in the Arab States. Nevertheless,
population growth has meant that the
number of illiterate adults has only fallen
from 52 million to 48 million. Similarly, the
region with the second fastest increase in
adult literacy rates, South and West Asia,
has seen its population of illiterate adults
remain stable at just over 400 million. In
sub-Saharan Africa, the number of illiterate
adults has increased by 37% since 1990,
mainly due to population growth, reaching
182 million in 2011. By 2015, it is projected
that 26% of all illiterate adults will live in
sub-Saharan Africa, up from 15% in 1990.
Number of illiterate adults, 10 countries with highest populations of illiterate adults,
1985–1994 and 2005–2011
300
287 287
250
1985–1994
2005–2011
200
183
Illiterate adults (million)
The
number of
illiterate
adults fell
by just 1%
since 2000
Goal 5: Gender parity and equality
150
50
40
30
20
10
*Data not available
Source: Annex, Statistical Table 2.
D. R. Congo*
Indonesia
Brazil*
Egypt
Ethiopia
Nigeria
Bangladesh
Pakistan*
0
China
10
India
Slow progress means that there has been
little change in the number of countries
achieving universal adult literacy. Of
87 countries, 21% had reached universal
adult literacy in 2000. Between 2000 and
2011, the number of countries that had
reached this level increased to 26%. By
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
in primary education, 10% in lower secondary
education and 8% in upper secondary education.
Among middle and high income countries, where
more countries achieve parity at any level, the
disparities are increasingly at the expense of boys
as one moves up to the lower and upper secondary
levels. For example, 2% of upper middle income
countries have disparity at the expense of boys in
primary school, 23% in lower secondary school and
62% in upper secondary school (Figure 6).
Reaching parity at both the primary and secondary
levels was singled out to be achieved by 2005,
earlier than the other goals. Yet, even by 2011,
many countries had not achieved this goal. At the
primary levels, for 161 countries, 57% had achieved
gender parity in 1999. Between 1999 and 2011,
the proportion of countries that had reached the
target increased to 63%. The number of countries
furthest from the target, with fewer than 90 girls
for every 100 boys enrolled, fell from 19% in
1999 to 9% in 2011.
Looking ahead, it is projected that by 2015,
70% of countries will have reached the goal
and 9% of countries will be close. By contrast,
14% of countries will still be far from the target,
and 7% will be very far, of which three-quarters
are in sub-Saharan Africa.
SUMMARY
A move towards gender parity does not always mean
more children in school. Burkina Faso, for example, is
projected to achieve parity in primary school by 2015,
but it still has the seventh-lowest gross enrolment
ratio in the world. And in Senegal, where progress has
been made in narrowing the gender gap, this is due
to improvement in female enrolment while the male
enrolment ratio has not increased since 2004.
At the lower secondary level, of 150 countries,
43% had achieved gender parity in 1999. It is
projected that by 2015, 56% of countries will have
achieved the target. At the other extreme, 33% of
countries were far from the target in 1999, of which
three-quarters had disparity at the expense of girls.
It is expected that by 2015, 21% of countries will
still experience gender disparity in lower secondary
school, in 70% of which the disparity will be at
girls’ expense.
Fast progress is feasible, as the example of
Turkey shows: it has almost achieved parity at
both lower and upper secondary levels, even though
the gender parity index in 1999 was 0.74 in lower
secondary and 0.62 in upper secondary. But there
is no room for complacency. Traditional perceptions
of gender roles that permeate society filter
down to schools.
By 2015,
70% of
countries
are
expected
to reach
gender
parity in
primary
enrolment
Figure 6: Few low income countries have achieved gender parity at any level of education
Countries with gender parity in enrolment ratios, by country income group, 2011
100
Disparity at
expense of boys
Parity
Disparity at
expense of girls
Countries (%)
80
60
40
20
0
Primary
Lower
secondary
Upper
secondary
Low income countries
Primary
Lower
secondary
Upper
secondary
Lower middle income countries
Primary
Lower
secondary
Upper
secondary
Upper middle income countries
Primary
Lower
secondary
Upper
secondary
High income countries
Source: UIS database.
11
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
teaching force trained to the national standard,
while 11 had less than 50% trained.
Goal 6: Quality of education
Improving quality and learning is likely to be
more central to the post-2015 global development
framework. Such a shift is vital to improve education
opportunities for the 250 million children who are
unable to read, write, or do basic mathematics,
130 million of whom are in school.
In a third of
countries,
less than
75% of
teachers
are trained
The pupil/teacher ratio is one measure for
assessing progress towards goal 6. Globally,
average pupil/teacher ratios have barely changed
at the pre-primary, primary and secondary levels.
In sub-Saharan Africa, with teacher recruitment
lagging behind growth in enrolment, ratios
stagnated and are now the highest in the world
at the pre-primary and primary levels. Of the
162 countries with data in 2011, 26 had a
pupil/teacher ratio in primary education exceeding
40:1, 23 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.
In some contexts, the presence of female teachers
is crucial to attract girls to school and improve their
learning outcomes. Yet women teachers are lacking
in some countries with high gender disparity in
enrolment, such as Djibouti and Eritrea.
Teachers need good quality learning materials to be
effective but many do not have access to textbooks.
In the United Republic of Tanzania, only 3.5% of all
grade 6 pupils had sole use of a reading textbook.
Poor physical infrastructure is another problem
for students in many poor countries. Children are
often squeezed into overcrowded classrooms, with
those in early grades particularly disadvantaged. In
Malawi, there are 130 children per class in grade 1,
on average, compared with 64 in the last grade. In
Chad, just one in four schools has a toilet, and only
one in three of those toilets is reserved for girls’ use.
Between 1999 and 2011, the pupil/teacher ratio
in primary education increased by at least 20% in
nine countries. By contrast, it fell by at least 20%
in 60 countries. Congo, Ethiopia and Mali more
than doubled primary school enrolment and yet
decreased their pupil/teacher ratios by more than
10 pupils per teacher.
At the secondary level, in 14 of 130 countries
with data the pupil/teacher ratio exceeds
30:1. Although the vast majority of the
countries facing the largest challenges
are in sub-Saharan Africa, the region
nevertheless managed to double the
number of secondary teachers over
1999–2011. Of the 60 countries with
data on the share of trained secondary
teachers, half had less than 75% of the
12
Figure 7: In 29 countries, there is a big gap between the number of pupils per
teacher and per trained teacher
Pupil/teacher ratio and pupil/trained teacher ratio, primary education, countries where
the pupil/trained teacher ratio exceeds the pupil/teacher ratio by at least 10:1, 2011
160
Pupil/trained teacher ratio
140
Pupil/teacher ratio
120
Pupils per teacher
However, many countries have
expanded teacher numbers rapidly
by hiring people to teach without
training. This may serve to get more
children into school, but jeopardizes
education quality. In a third of countries
with data, less than 75% of teachers are
trained according to national standards.
The pupil/trained teacher ratio exceeds
the pupil/teacher ratio by 10 pupils in 29
of the 98 countries, of which two-thirds
are in sub-Saharan Africa (Figure 7).
The proportion of teachers trained to national
standards is particularly low in pre-primary
education. Although the number of teachers at this
level has increased by 53% since 2000, in 40 of the
75 countries with data, less than 75% of teachers
are trained to the national standard.
100
80
60
40
20
0
Barbados
Dominica
Qatar
Kyrgyzstan
Guyana
Nicaragua
Solomon Is.
Belize
Liberia
Comoros
Lesotho
S. Tome/Principe
Nigeria
Equat. Guinea
Togo
Guinea
Ghana
Sudan (pre-secession)
Sierra Leone
Mozambique
Cameroon
Bangladesh
Senegal
Mali
Benin
Chad
Ethiopia
Guinea-Bissau
C. A. R.
SUMMARY
Source: Annex, Statistical Table 8.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
While rich boys are expected to reach universal
primary completion by 2030 in 56 of 74 low and
middle income countries, poor girls will reach the
goal by that date in only 7 countries, just one of
which is low income. Even by 2060, poor girls will
not have reached the goal in 24 of the 28 low income
countries in the sample. In sub-Saharan Africa, if
recent trends continue, the richest boys will achieve
universal primary completion in 2021, but the
poorest girls will not catch up until 2086 (Figure 8).
In sub-Saharan
Africa, the
poorest
girls will
not achieve
universal
primary
completion
until 2086
Spending time in primary school is no guarantee
that a child will be able to read and write.
Among 68 countries with data, the poorest
young women are projected to achieve universal
literacy only in 2072.
The situation is even more dire for lower secondary
school completion. In 44 of the 74 countries
Figure 8: The achievement of universal primary
and lower secondary education lies well into the future for
sub-Saharan Africa
Projected year of achieving primary and lower secondary completion
in excess of 97%, by population group, sub-Saharan Africa
2120
2110
Lower secondary
Primary
2100
2090
2080
2070
2060
2050
2040
2030
Female poorest
Male poorest
Female rural
Male rural
Sub-Saharan Africa
Female urban
2010
Male urban
2020
Female richest
For these assessments to facilitate monitoring
post-2015 global learning goals, three key principles
need to be adhered to. First, all children and
young people need to be taken into account when
interpreting results, not just those who were in school
and took part in the assessment. Disadvantaged
children may already be out of the school system,
and therefore unlikely to have reached minimum
learning standards, by the time the assessment
is administered. Not counting them means that
the scale of the problem is understated. Second,
better information on background characteristics
of students is needed to identify which groups of
students are not learning. Third, information on the
quality of education systems should also be included
as part of the assessments.
After 2015, unfinished business will remain across
the six EFA goals, while new priorities are likely
to emerge. Analysis of the time it will take to
achieve universal primary and lower secondary
school completion and youth literacy paints a
worrying picture.
Male richest
Regional and international assessments are critical
for monitoring a global learning goal after 2015. Just
as improved global monitoring of access has helped
maintain pressure on governments to ensure that
each child completes primary school, better global
monitoring of learning can push governments to
make certain that all children not only go to school
but are achieving the basics.
Leaving no one behind — how long will it take?
Year of achievement of primary and lower
secondary education
With 250 million children not learning the basics, it
is vital for a global post-2015 goal to be set which
will monitor whether, by 2030, all children and youth,
regardless of their circumstances, acquire foundation
skills in reading, writing and mathematics. Meeting
this need requires countries to strengthen their
national assessment systems and ensure that they
are used to inform policy. Many national assessment
systems are lacking in this respect. Governments
often consider their public examination system as
equivalent to a national assessment system, even
though it is mainly used to promote students between
levels of education. National assessments should
be a diagnostic tool that can establish whether
students achieve the learning standards expected by
a particular age or grade, and how this achievement
changes over time for subgroups of the population.
SUMMARY
Source: EFA Global Monitoring Report team calculations (2013), based on Lange (2013).
13
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Low income
countries
Lower middle
income
countries
Circa 2000
Monitoring global education targets
after 2015
Since the six Education for All goals were adopted
in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000, a lack of precise targets
and indicators has prevented some education
priorities from receiving the attention they deserve.
By 2010,
the poorest
rural young
women
had spent
less than
3 years
in school
The shape of new goals after 2015 should be guided
by the principles of upholding education as a right,
making sure all children have an equal chance
of education and recognizing the learning stages
at each phase of a person’s life. There should
be one core set of goals aligned with the global
development agenda, accompanied by a more
detailed set of targets that make up a post-2015
Education for All framework. Each goal must be
clear and measurable, with the aim of ensuring
that no one is left behind. To achieve this, progress
should be tracked by the achievements of the lowest
performing groups, making sure the gap between
them and the better-off is narrowing.
The number of years young people spend in school
is one measure of overall progress in access to
education. To achieve a goal of universal lower
secondary completion by 2030, young people will
need to stay in school about nine years. By 2010, the
richest urban young men had already spent more
than 9.5 years in school in low income countries, on
average, and more than 12 years in lower middle
income countries. But the poorest young women in
rural areas had spent less than 3 years in school
in both low and lower middle income countries,
14
Sub-Saharan
Africa
Richest urban male
Poorest rural female
Richest urban male
Poorest rural female
Richest urban male
Poorest rural female
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Richest urban male
While these projections are extremely disconcerting,
they are based on recent trends that can be changed
if governments, aid donors and the international
education community take concerted action to
make education available to all, including the
marginalized. The projections also show how vital
it will be to track progress towards education goals
for the most disadvantaged groups after 2015 and
to put policies in place that maintain and accelerate
progress by redressing imbalances.
Figure 9: Inequality in educational attainment remained unchanged
over the last decade
Years of education, 20- to 24-year-olds, circa 2000 and 2010
Poorest rural female
analysed, there is at least a 50-year gap between
when all the richest boys complete lower secondary
school and when all the poorest girls do so. And,
if recent trends continue, girls from the poorest
families in sub-Saharan Africa will only achieve this
target in 2111, 64 years later than the boys from the
richest families.
Years of education
SUMMARY
South and
West Asia
Circa 2010
Source: EFA Global Monitoring Report team analysis (2013), based on Demographic and Health
Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.
leaving them well below the 6-year target that is
associated with universal primary completion, which
is supposed to be achieved by 2015 (Figure 9). In
sub-Saharan Africa, the gap between the time the
poorest rural females and the richest urban males
spent in school actually widened between 2000 and
2010, from 6.9 years to 8.3 years.
Over the past decade there has been more
progress in getting children into primary school
than in ensuring that children complete primary
or lower secondary education. And extreme
inequality persists and in some cases has widened.
In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, almost all the
richest boys in urban areas were entering school in
2000. By the end of the decade, their primary school
completion rate had reached 87%, and their lower
secondary school completion rate 70%. By contrast,
among the poorest girls in rural areas, 49% were
entering school at the beginning of the decade
and 61% by the end of the decade. Only 25% were
completing primary education and 11% lower
secondary education in 2000; furthermore, these
rates had fallen by the end of the decade to 23% and
9%, respectively. Inequality in South and West Asia
is also wide and largely unchanged: by the end of
the decade, while 89% of the richest urban males
completed lower secondary school, only 13% of the
poorest rural girls did so.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
A goal on learning is an indispensable part
of a future global education monitoring
framework, but focusing only on learning
assessments can be misleading if large numbers
of children never make it to the grade where
skills are tested. In the United Republic of
Tanzania, for example, the proportion of children
in grade 6 who achieved a minimum standard in
reading in 2007 ranged from 80% of the poorest
rural girls to 97% of the richest urban boys.
However, while 92% of the richest urban boys of
grade 6 age had reached that grade, only 40% of
the poorest rural girls had done so. If it is assumed
that children who did not reach grade 6 could not
have achieved the minimum standard, then the
proportions among children of that cohort who
learned the basics were 90% for the richest urban
boys and 32% for the poorest rural girls.
To make sure inequality is overcome by 2030,
country plans need to include specific targets so
that education participation and learning can be
monitored for individual population groups. Very few
currently do so. Gender is the disadvantage most
frequently covered in education plans, yet only 24 of
53 country plans reviewed for this report included
gender equality targets in primary and lower
secondary education.
Four plans included indicators on participation of
particular ethnic groups. Only three specifically
SUMMARY
targeted disparity in access between rural and
urban areas in primary and lower secondary
education. Moreover, only three plans had an
enrolment indicator that differentiated between
poorer and richer children. Bangladesh’s plan
included a monitoring framework for tracking
progress in enrolment ratios across wealth
quintiles, and Namibia’s included a target of
making sure 80% of orphans and other vulnerable
children in each region were enrolled in primary and
secondary education by the final year of the plan.
Even fewer countries plan to monitor inequality in
learning outcomes. Only 8 of the 53 countries did
so at the primary level and 8 at the lower secondary
level, and in most cases monitoring was restricted
to gender inequality. Sri Lanka is one exception, with
targets for achievement scores in mathematics and
native language in the lowest performing regions.
Only 8 of 53
countries
plan to
monitor
inequality
in learning
The failure over the past decade to assess
progress in education goals by various population
subgroups has concealed wide inequality. Its
invisibility is further reflected in country plans’
lack of national targets for assessing progress in
narrowing gaps in access or learning. Post-2015
goals need to include a commitment to making sure
the most disadvantaged groups achieve benchmarks
set for goals. Failure to do so could mean that
measurement of progress continues to mask the
fact that the most advantaged benefit the most.
15
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Monitoring progress on financing
Education for All
Insufficient financing is one of the main obstacles
to achieving Education for All. The finance gap
to achieve good quality basic education for all by
2015 has reached US$26 billion, putting the goal
of getting every child into school far out of reach.
Unfortunately, donors seem more likely to reduce
their aid than increase it in coming years. Unless
urgent action is taken to change aid patterns, the
goal of ensuring that every child is in school and
learning by 2015 will be seriously jeopardized.
Of 150
countries,
only 41
spent 6%
or more
of GNP on
education
in 2011
With little time left before 2015, closing the financing
gap might seem impossible. But analysis in this
Report shows that the gap could be filled by raising
more domestic revenue, devoting an adequate
share of existing and projected government
resources to education and sharpening the focus of
external assistance.
If, as expected, new education goals after 2015
extend to lower secondary education, the finance
gap will rise to US$38 billion. The post-2015
framework must include explicit financing targets,
demanding full transparency, so that all donors are
accountable for their commitments, and finance
gaps do not thwart our promises to children.
Many countries far from EFA need to spend
more on education
Domestic spending on education has increased in
recent years, particularly in low and lower middle
income countries, partly because of improvements
in economic growth. Government spending on
education increased from 4.6% to 5.1% of gross
national product (GNP) between 1999 and 2011,
on average. In low and middle income countries it
rose faster: 30 of these countries increased their
spending on education by one percentage point of
GNP or more between 1999 and 2011.
The Dakar Framework for Action did not establish
how much countries should commit to education.
The failure to set a common financing target for
the EFA goals should be addressed after 2015,
with a specific goal set: that countries should
16
allocate at least 6% of GNP to education. Of the
150 countries with data, only 41 spent 6% or more
of GNP on education in 2011, and 25 countries
dedicated less than 3%.
It is widely accepted that countries should allocate
at least 20% of their budget to education. Yet the
global average in 2011 was only 15%, a proportion
that has hardly changed since 1999. Of the 138
countries with data, only 25 spent more than 20%
in 2011, while at least 6 low and middle income
countries decreased their education expenditure
as a share of total government expenditure by 5
percentage points or more between 1999 and 2011.
This situation is not expected to improve in coming
years. Of 49 countries with data in 2012, 25
planned to shrink their education budget between
2011 and 2012. Of these, 16 were in sub-Saharan
Africa. However, some countries, including
Afghanistan, Benin and Ethiopia, are resisting this
negative trend and are expected to increase their
education budgets.
To tap into the potential for economic growth in
many of the world’s poorest countries, governments
need to expand their tax base and devote a fifth of
their budget to education. If governments in 67 low
and middle income countries did this, they could
raise an additional US$153 billion for education in
2015. That would increase the average share of GDP
spent on education from 3% to 6% by 2015.
Few poor countries manage to raise 20% of their
GDP in taxes, as needed to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals. Only 7 of the 67 countries
with data both generate 20% of GDP in taxes and
allocate the recommended 20% of the revenue
to education. In Pakistan, tax revenue is just 10%
of GDP and education receives only around 10%
of government expenditure. If the government
increased its tax revenue to 14% of GDP by 2015 and
allocated one-fifth of this to education, it could raise
sufficient funds to get all of Pakistan’s children and
adolescents into school.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Ethiopia is one of 11 among the 67 countries that
have been successful in prioritizing education
in the government budget but could do far more
to maximize revenue from taxation. In 2011, the
government received 12% of GDP from taxes, on
average. If the proportion were to increase to 16% by
2015, the sector would receive 18% more resources
– enabling US$19 more to be spent per primary
school age child.
Tax revenue as a share of GDP is, however, growing
far too slowly in poorer countries. At present rates,
only 4 of the 48 countries currently raising less than
20% of GDP in tax would reach the 20% threshold
by 2015.
A well-functioning taxation system enables
governments to support their education system
with domestic finance. Some middle income
countries, such as Egypt, India and the Philippines,
have far greater potential to mobilize domestic
resources for education through improved taxes.
Higher levels of tax revenue in Brazil help explain
how it spends ten times as much as India per
primary school child.
Some countries in South Asia grant large tax
exemptions to strong domestic interest groups,
resulting in some of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios
in the world. In Pakistan, the tax/GDP ratio of 10%
can be partly explained by the political influence of
the agricultural lobby. While the agricultural sector
makes up 22.5% of Pakistan’s GDP, its share in tax
revenue is just 1.2%. In India, the majority of tax
revenue forgone is due to exemptions from custom
and excise duties. The revenue lost to exemptions
came to the equivalent of 5.7% of GDP in 2012/13.
If 20% of this had been earmarked for education,
the sector would have received an additional
US$22.5 billion in 2013, increasing funding
by almost 40% compared with the current
education budget.
SUMMARY
allocated to education, it would add between US$38
billion and US$56 billion to funding for the sector.
Illegal tax practices cost African governments an
estimated US$63 billion a year. If these practices
were halted and 20% of the resulting income
spent on education, it would raise an additional
US$13 billion for the sector each year.
While governments must lead the drive to
reform taxation, donors can play an important
complementary role. Just US$1 of donor aid to
strengthen tax regimes, for example, can
generate up to US$350 in tax revenue. Yet less
than 0.1% of total aid was spent supporting tax
programmes between 2002 and 2011. In addition,
donor country governments should demand
transparency from corporations registered in
their countries.
67 countries
could increase
education
resources
by US$153
billion through
reforms to
expand the
tax base
Increasing tax revenue and allocating an adequate
share to education could raise considerable extra
resources for the sector in a short time. The EFA
Global Monitoring Report team estimates that 67
low and middle income countries could increase
education resources by US$153 billion, or 72%, by
2015 through reforms to raise tax/GDP ratios and
public expenditure on education.
For many of the world’s poorest countries, tax
evasion results in the elite building personal
fortunes, rather than strong education systems for
the majority. If the trillions of dollars estimated to
be hidden away in tax havens were subject to capital
gains tax, and 20% of the resulting income was
© Eduardo Martino/UNESCO
Some governments sell concessions to exploit
natural resources for less than their true value.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo lost
US$1.36 billion from deals with mining companies
over three years in 2010 to 2012, equal to the
amount allocated to education over two years in
2010 and 2011.
17
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
On average across the 67 countries, spending per
primary school age child would increase from
US$209 to US$466 in 2015. In the low income
countries among the 67, the average amount spent
per primary school age child would increase from
US$102 to US$158.
Fourteen of these 67 countries have already
reached the proposed target of spending at least
6% of GDP on education. Of the 53 yet to reach the
target, 19 could achieve it if they expanded and
diversified the tax base and prioritized education
spending by 2015 (Figure 10).
Reforms
to expand
domestic
resources
could meet
56% of
the annual
financing
gap in
basic
education
These additions to domestic resources could meet
56% of the US$26 billion average annual financing
gap in basic education for 46 low and lower middle
income countries, or 54% of the US$38 billion gap
in basic and lower secondary education.
Such reforms are not without precedent. Ecuador
renegotiated contracts with oil companies, widened
its tax base and made education a higher priority,
tripling its education expenditure between 2003
and 2010.
To achieve Education for All, it is necessary
not only to increase domestic resources for
education but also to redistribute these resources
so that a fair share reaches those most in need.
More often, however, resources are skewed
towards the most privileged. To shift education
spending in favour of the marginalized, many
governments have introduced funding mechanisms
that allocate more resources to parts of the country
or groups of schools that need greater support
to overcome educational deprivation and
inequality. Countries have different methods of
redistributing resources. Brazil, for example,
guarantees a certain minimum spending level per
pupil, giving priority to schools in rural areas, with
greater weight on highly marginalized indigenous
groups. The reforms have led to improvement in
enrolment and learning in the disadvantaged north
of the country.
Other redistribution programmes have been less
successful, however. One reason is that allocations
per child still do not adequately reflect the costs of
delivering quality education to the marginalized. In
one of India’s wealthier states, Kerala, education
spending per pupil was about US$685. By contrast,
in the poorer state of Bihar it was just US$100.
Poorer countries can find it difficult to identify
and target the groups most in need. As a result,
many base allocations on enrolment figures, to
the detriment of areas where large numbers of
children are out of school. In Kenya, for example,
the capitation grant is distributed on the basis of
number of students enrolled, a disadvantage for the
12 counties in the arid and semi-arid areas that are
home to 46% of the out-of-school population.
To realize the full potential of redistributive
measures, governments need to ensure that
such resources cover the entire cost of a quality
education for the most vulnerable and that
far-reaching reforms strengthen education
systems’ capacity to implement such measures.
Figure 10: Modest increases in tax effort and prioritizing education spending could significantly increase resources
Expenditure on education as percentage of GDP in 2015 if the tax/GDP ratio grew and the budget share of education increased
Potential
Baseline (2011)
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Mongolia
Angola
Bhutan
Malawi
Yemen
Egypt
Haiti
Paraguay
Zimbabwe
Eritrea
Kyrgyzstan
Togo
Georgia
D.R. Congo
India
Liberia
Tajikistan
Senegal
Rwanda
Guyana
Mali
Papua N. Guinea
Mauritania
Armenia
Benin
Morocco
Afghanistan
Nigeria
Sierra Leone
Ethiopia
Nepal
Pakistan
Lao PDR
Guinea-Bissau
Burkina Faso
Niger
Nicaragua
Chad
Côte d’Ivoire
Uganda
Cambodia
Gambia
Indonesia
Cameroon
Bangladesh
Philippines
Sri Lanka
Guatemala
Madagascar
Guinea
C. A. R.
Zambia
Myanmar
Education spending as a share of GDP (%)
9
Sources: EFA Global Monitoring Report team calculations (2013), based on UIS database; Development Finance International and Oxfam (2013); IMF (2012, 2013).
18
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
SUMMARY
In some countries, aid has been falling for more
than a year. Aid has played a key part in supporting
efforts to get more children into school in the United
Republic of Tanzania, but it fell by 12% between
2009 and 2010 and by a further 57% in 2011.
Trends in aid to education
With improvement in the numbers of children out of
school stagnating, a final push is needed to ensure
that all children are in school by 2015. Even before
the economic downturn, donors were off track to
fulfil their education finance promises. A more
recent decline in aid to basic education increases
the difficulty of this task.
The world’s poorest children, who are the most
likely to be out of school, live not only in low
income countries but also in some lower middle
income countries. Since 2000, 25 countries have
graduated to this group, which now comprises
54 countries, while 36 are classified as low income.
In 1999, 84% of the world’s out-of-school children
lived in low income countries and 12% in lower
middle income countries; by 2011, 37% lived in
low income countries and 49% in lower middle
income countries. This shift was largely due to the
graduation to lower middle income status of some
large-population countries, such as India, Nigeria
and Pakistan. While these countries could do far
more to raise their own resources for education
and distribute them to those most in need, such
reforms will take time. In the meantime, donors
should direct aid to the areas in lower middle
income countries where poverty is concentrated to
make sure another generation of children in these
countries is not denied its right to education.
While aid to education rose steadily after 2002, it
peaked in 2010 and is now falling: total aid to all
levels of education declined by 7% between 2010
and 2011 (Figure 11). Aid to basic education fell for
the first time since 2002, by 6%: from US$6.2 billion
in 2010 to US$5.8 billion in 2011. Aid to secondary
education declined by 11% between 2010 and 2011
from an already low level. This puts at risk the
chance of meeting Education for All goals and any
hope of more ambitious goals to include universal
lower secondary education after 2015.
Low income countries, which only receive around
one-third of aid to basic education, witnessed a
larger decrease in aid to basic education than
middle income countries. Aid fell by 9% in low
income countries between 2010 and 2011, from
US$2.05 billion to US$1.86 billion. As a result,
the resources available per child dropped from
US$18 in 2010 to US$16 in 2011.
In 2011, aid
to basic
education
fell for the
first time
since 2002
Direct aid to education fell slightly more than overall
aid to other sectors between 2010 and 2011, and
thus the share of aid to education declined from
12% to 11%. The fall in aid to education reflects
the changing spending patterns of a large number
of donors. Canada, France, the Netherlands and
the United States, in particular, cut spending
on education more than they reduced overall
aid. Between 2010 and 2011, 21 bilateral and
In sub-Saharan Africa, home to over half the
world’s out-of-school population, aid to basic
education declined by 7% between 2010 and 2011.
The US$134 million reduction in basic education aid
to the region would have been enough to fund good
quality school places for over 1 million children.
Figure 11: Aid to education fell by US$1 billion between 2010 and 2011
Total aid to education disbursements, 2002–2011
16
14.4
14.4
13.4
14
Constant 2011 US$ billions
12.5
12
11.4
10.2
10
8
6
4
2
0
12.3
8.9
6.7
4.4
9.2
1.2
5.0
2.0
2.0
5.1
4.2
2.7
1.1
5.3
1.4
4.7
1.3
3.0
3.3
3.6
4.2
2002
2003
2004
2005
1.7
4.6
5.1
5.2
2006
2007
2008
5.6
5.7
2.5
2.5
6.2
6.2
2009
2010
Post secondary education
Secondary education
Basic education
5.4
2.2
Only US$1.9 billion of basic
education aid was allocated to
low income countries in 2011
5.8
2011
Source: OECD-DAC (2013).
19
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
multilateral donors reduced their aid disbursements
to basic education. The largest decreases in volume
terms were by Canada, the European Union, France,
Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and the United
States, which together accounted for 90% of the
reduction in aid to basic education.
Education
receives
just 1.4% of
humanitarian
aid
The United States moved from being the largest
bilateral donor to basic education in 2010 to second
place in 2011. The United Kingdom is now the
largest donor to education. The Netherlands’ aid
to basic education fell by over a third between 2010
and 2011; it had been the largest donor to basic
education in 2007, but by 2011 was in 11th place.
Australia, the IMF and the World Bank
increased their overall aid to basic education
between 2010 and 2011 but reduced their spending
in low income countries. World Bank aid to basic
education increased by 13% overall, but fell by
23% in low income countries. The United Republic
of Tanzania saw World Bank disbursements
fall from US$88 million in 2002 to less than
US$0.3 million in 2011.
The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is an
important source of financing for some low income
countries. In 2011, the GPE disbursed a record
US$385 million to basic education, making it
the fourth largest donor to low and lower middle
income countries that year. For the 31 countries
with a programme implementation grant in 2011,
24% of basic education aid was disbursed by the
GPE. It is unlikely, however, to have made up for
the reduction in World Bank spending. The United
Republic of Tanzania became a GPE partner in 2013
with a US$5.2 million grant for its education plan.
All this, however, is allocated to Zanzibar, and the
amount is small compared with what the country
received from the World Bank early in the 2000s.
To improve monitoring of its contributions, the GPE
needs to report its aid flows to the OECD-DAC, just
as global health funds such as the GAVI Alliance
and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis
and Malaria do.
There is no sign that overall aid will stop declining
before the 2015 deadline. From 2011 to 2012,
total aid decreased by 4%, with 16 DAC donors
decreasing their aid: 13 DAC donors made aid a
lower priority by decreasing aid as a proportion
of gross national income (GNI). Less developed
countries are expected to bear the brunt of these
reductions, with cuts to their bilateral aid of 12.8%
20
from 2011 to 2012. In 2013, aid is expected to fall in
31 of 36 low income countries, the majority of which
are in sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition, only five of the fifteen members of
the European Union that agreed to increase their
aid to 0.7% of GNI by 2015 are expected to meet
their commitment. If these countries met their
promises, they would raise US$9 billion more for
education in 2015.
Education in conflict-affected countries should be
a priority for donors. These countries house half
of the world’s out-of-school children. Currently
education receives just 1.4% of humanitarian aid, far
from the 4% called for by the UN Secretary-General’s
Global Education First Initiative (Figure 12). In plans
for 2013, education’s share of overall humanitarian
aid is likely to reach no more than 2%.
In Mali, where most schools in the north remained
closed due to conflict, education made up 5%
of appeal requests for 2013, but just 15% of the
requested funds had been pledged by September
2013. Similarly, 36% of the resources requested
in 2013 for education in Syria had actually been
pledged. While these countries might receive more
of the requested funds later in 2013, they would
come too late for the millions of children who have
had to drop out of school due to conflict.
It is not only the amount of aid that counts but also
whether it is used to target the most disadvantaged.
These children do not receive all the aid available,
however: a quarter of direct aid to education is
spent on students studying in universities in rich
countries. Even though scholarships and imputed
student costs may be vital to strengthen human
resource capacity in low income countries, most of
this funding actually goes to upper middle income
countries, with China the largest recipient, receiving
21% of the total.
On average over 2010–2011, donors – primarily
Germany and Japan – disbursed US$656 million
per year to China for scholarships and student
imputed costs, which was 77 times the amount
of aid disbursed to Chad for basic education over
the same period. The total funding in the form of
imputed student costs and scholarships received
annually by Algeria, China, Morocco, Tunisia and
Turkey was equivalent to the total amount of
direct aid to basic education for all 36 low income
countries in 2010–2011, on average.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Aid can also be delivered on unfavourable terms
for poorer countries: 15% of aid is in the form
of loans that countries have to pay back at
concessional interest rates. Without funding from
bilateral donors, poorer countries risk becoming
dependent on these loans, leading to debt that
could restrict their ability to fund education from
their own resources.
the poorest households. In addition, it shows
how vital aid is to education financing in some
of the poorest countries: it accounts for almost
a quarter of education spending in Malawi and
Rwanda. These findings highlight the importance
of building a comprehensive national education
accounts system, which could be modelled on the
experience in health.
Removing imputed student costs, scholarships and
loans, Germany would drop from being the largest
donor in direct aid to education to being the fifth
largest; the World Bank would fall from third to
fourteenth place. The United Kingdom and United
States, by contrast, would jump from sixth and
seventh position to first and second.
To avoid failing another generation of children due to
lack of resources after 2015, national governments
and aid donors need to be held to account for their
commitments to provide the resources necessary to
reach education goals. Drawing on analysis included
in EFA Global Monitoring Reports over the years, the
Report team proposes that a target should be set for
national governments to allocate at least 6% of their
GNP to education. Targets for governments and aid
donors should also include commitments for them
to spend at least 20% of their budgets on education.
Setting these targets, and making sure governments
and aid donors keep to them, will be an important
contribution to the education opportunities of
children and young people in the future.
Information on the whole spectrum of education
financing – including aid, domestic resources and
household spending – is often insufficient and
fragmented, resulting in only partial analysis and
diagnosis of how much money is needed and where.
New analysis from seven countries shows that
households bear up to 37% of education expenditure
in primary education and up to 58% in secondary
education, which places a particular burden on
SUMMARY
Financing
targets after
2015 are
needed to
avoid failing
another
generation
of children
Figure 12: Education’s double disadvantage in humanitarian aid: a small share of requests and the smallest share of requests that get
funded
Consolidated and flash appeal requests and funding by sector, 2012
100
95%
2 500
90
Education received only
1.4% of all funding
74%
80
70
US$ millions
2 000
60
53%
1 500
50
45%
37%
36%
38%
40
1 000
28%
26%
30
20
500
Share of funding request met (%)
3 000
10
0
Food
Health
Agriculture
Coordination
and support
services
Funding received
Water and
sanitation
Unmet requirements
Protection/
human rights/
rule of law
Shelter and
non-food
items
Economic
recovery and
infrastructure
Education
0
% of request funded (right axis)
Source: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2013).
21
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Part 2:
Education transforms lives
Treaties and laws worldwide recognize that
education is a fundamental human right. In addition,
education imparts knowledge and skills that
enable people to realize their full potential, and so
it becomes a catalyst for the achievement of other
development goals. Education reduces poverty,
boosts job opportunities and fosters economic
prosperity. It also increases people’s chances of
leading a healthy life, deepens the foundations of
democracy, and changes attitudes to protect the
environment and empower women.
If all
students
left school
with basic
reading
skills,
171 million
people
could be
lifted out
of poverty
Educating girls and women, in particular, has
unmatched transformative power. As well as
boosting their own chances of getting jobs, staying
healthy and participating fully in society, educating
girls and young women has a marked impact on
the health of their children and accelerates their
countries’ transition to stable population growth.
To unlock the wider benefits of education and
achieve development goals after 2015, it needs
to be equitable and to extend at least to lower
secondary school. And the schooling that children
receive needs to be of good quality so that they
actually learn the basics.
Education reduces poverty and boosts jobs
and growth
Education is a key way of helping individuals escape
poverty and of preventing poverty from being passed
down through the generations. It enables those
in paid formal employment to earn higher wages
and offers better livelihoods for those who work in
agriculture and the urban informal sector.
EFA Global Monitoring Report team calculations
show that if all students in low income countries
left school with basic reading skills, 171 million
people could be lifted out of poverty, which would
be equivalent to a 12% cut in world poverty. An
22
important way education reduces poverty is by
increasing people’s income. Globally, one year of
school increases earnings by 10%, on average.
Education can help people escape from working
poverty. In the United Republic of Tanzania, 82% of
workers who had less than primary education were
below the poverty line. But working adults with
primary education were 20% less likely to be poor,
while secondary education reduced the chances
of being poor by almost 60%. It is not just time in
school, but skills acquired that count. In Pakistan,
working women with good literacy skills earned 95%
more than women with weak literacy skills.
In the formal sector, higher wages reflect the higher
productivity of more educated workers. But many
of the poorest are involved in informal sector work,
running small businesses. Educated people are
more likely to start a business, and their businesses
are likely to be more profitable. In Uganda,
owners of household enterprises with a primary
education earned 36% more than those with no
education; those with a lower secondary education
earned 56% more.
In rural areas, farmers with good literacy and
numeracy skills can interpret and respond to
new information, making better use of modern
inputs and technologies to increase the
productivity of traditional crops and diversify
into higher value crops. In Mozambique, literate
farmers were 26 percentage points more likely than
non-literate ones to cultivate cash crops.
Education also helps people in rural areas diversify
their income by involvement in off-farm work. In
rural Indonesia, 15% of men and 17% of women
with no education were employed in non-farm work,
compared with 61% of men and 72% of women with
secondary education.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
One of the benefits of increased education is
that educated parents are likely to have more
educated children. Analysis of household surveys
from 56 countries finds that, for each additional
year of the mother’s education, the average child
attains an extra 0.32 years, and for girls the benefit
is slightly larger.
By benefiting women in particular, education can
help narrow gender gaps in work opportunities and
pay. In Argentina and Jordan, for instance, among
people with primary education, women earned
around half the average wage of men, while among
those with secondary education, women earned
around two-thirds as much as men.
Education helps protect working adults from
exploitation by increasing their opportunities to
obtain secure contracts. In urban El Salvador,
only 7% of working adults with less than primary
education had an employment contract, compared
with 49% of those with secondary education.
Education not only facilitates individuals’ escape
from poverty, but also generates productivity that
fuels economic growth. A one-year increase in
the average educational attainment of a country’s
population increases annual per capita GDP growth
from 2% to 2.5%.
SUMMARY
measured by the Gini coefficient, which ranges from
zero, indicating perfect equality, to one, indicating
maximum inequality. An improvement in the Gini
coefficient by 0.1 accelerates growth by half a
percentage point, increasing income per capita by
23% over 40 years. If sub-Saharan Africa’s education
Gini coefficient of 0.49 had been halved to the level
in Latin America and the Caribbean, the annual
growth rate in GDP per capita over 2005–2010
could have risen by 47% (from 2.4% to 3.5%) and
income could have grown by US$82 per capita
over the period.
Comparing Pakistan and Viet Nam illustrates starkly
the importance of equitable education. In 2005, the
average number of years adults had spent at school
was similar: 4.5 in Pakistan and 4.9 in Viet Nam.
Education levels, however, were very unequally
distributed in Pakistan: Pakistan’s Gini coefficient
for education inequality was more than double
the level in Viet Nam. The difference in education
inequality between the countries accounts for 60%
of the difference in their per capita growth between
2005 and 2010. Viet Nam’s per capita income, which
was around 40% below Pakistan’s in the 1990s,
not only caught up with Pakistan’s but was 20%
higher by 2010.
For each
additional
year of
mothers’
education, a
child spends
an extra
0.32 years
in school
Comparing experiences within regions further
illustrates the importance of education. In
Guatemala, adults had 3.6 years of schooling, on
average, in 2005 and the average level increased
by only 2.3 years from 1965 to 2005. If the country
had matched the average for Latin America and
the Caribbean, where the average number of years
that adults spent at school rose from 3.6 in 1965
to 7.5 in 2005, it could have more than doubled its
average annual growth rate between 2005 and 2010,
equivalent to an additional US$500 per person.
Only by investing in equitable education – making
sure that the poorest complete more years in
school – can countries achieve the kind of growth
that banishes poverty. Equality in education can be
© Karel Prinsloo/ARETE/UNESCO
Education can help explain differences in regional
growth trajectories. In 1965, adults in East Asia and
the Pacific had spent 2.7 more years in school than
those in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the next 45 years,
the average growth rate was more than four times
faster in East Asia and the Pacific.
23
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Education improves people’s chances of a
healthier life
Education is one of the most powerful ways of
improving people’s health. It saves the lives of
millions of mothers and children, helps prevent
and contain disease, and is an essential element of
efforts to reduce malnutrition. Educated people are
better informed about diseases, take preventative
measures, recognize signs of illness early and tend
to use health care services more often. Despite
its benefits, education is often neglected as a vital
health intervention in itself and as a means of
making other health interventions more effective.
If all
women
completed
primary
education,
there
would be
66% fewer
maternal
deaths
There are few more dramatic illustrations of the
power of education than the estimate that the lives
of 2.1 million children under 5 were saved between
1990 and 2009 because of improvements in the
education of women of reproductive age. However,
the challenge remaining is enormous. In 2012,
6.6 million children under 5 died, most of them in
low and lower middle income countries. If all
women completed primary education in these
countries, the under-5 mortality rate would fall by
15%. If all women completed secondary education,
it would fall by 49%, equal to around 2.8 million
lives a year (Infographic: Saving Children’s Lives).
Around 40% of all under-5 deaths occur within
the first 28 days of life, the majority being due
to complications during delivery. Yet the most
recent estimates suggest there were no skilled
birth attendants present in over half the births in
sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Across 57 low
and middle income countries, a literate mother was
23% more likely to have a skilled attendant at birth
than an illiterate mother. In Mali, maternal literacy
more than tripled this likelihood.
Educated mothers are better informed about
specific diseases, so they can take measures to
prevent them. Pneumonia is the largest cause
of child deaths, accounting for 17% of the total
worldwide. One additional year of maternal
education can lead to a 14% decrease in the
pneumonia death rate – equivalent to 160,000
child lives saved every year. Diarrhoea is the fourth
biggest child killer, accounting for 9% of child
deaths. If all women completed primary education,
the incidence of diarrhoea would fall by 8% in low
and lower middle income countries; with secondary
education, it would fall by 30%. The probability of a
24
child being immunized against diphtheria, tetanus
and whooping cough would increase by 10% if all
women in low and lower middle income countries
completed primary education, and by 43% if they
completed secondary education.
A mother’s education is just as crucial for her own
health as it is for her offspring’s. Every day, almost
800 women die from preventable causes related to
pregnancy and childbirth. If all women completed
primary education, there would be 66% fewer
maternal deaths, saving 189,000 lives per year. In
sub-Saharan Africa alone, if all women completed
primary education, there would be 70% fewer
maternal deaths, saving 113,400 women’s lives.
Some countries have seen considerable gains.
Thanks to education reforms in the 1970s, the
average amount of schooling young women received
increased by 2.2 years in Nigeria. This accounted for
a 29% reduction in the maternal mortality rate.
Improving education is a powerful way to help
reduce the incidence of infectious diseases such
as HIV/AIDS. Education helps increase awareness
about HIV prevention, for example. In South and
West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, literate women
were as much as 30 percentage points more likely
than those who were not literate to be aware that
they had the right to refuse sex or request condom
use if they knew that their partner had a sexually
transmitted disease. Knowing where to get tested
for HIV is a first step to receiving treatment if
needed. But only 52% of women who were not
literate in sub-Saharan Africa knew where to get
tested for HIV, compared with 85% of the literate.
Malaria is one of the world’s deadliest diseases,
killing one child every minute in Africa. Improved
access to education is crucial in ensuring the
effectiveness of preventative measures, such as the
use of drugs or bed nets treated with insecticide.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a
fifth of the world’s malaria-related deaths occur,
the education of the household head or the mother
increased the probability that the family slept under
a bed net. Such changes result in fewer infections,
especially in areas of high transmission risk. In
these areas, the odds of children having malaria
parasites were 22% lower if their mothers had
primary education than if they had no education, or
36% less if they had secondary education.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
SUMMARY
SAVING CHILDREN'S LIVES
A higher level of education reduces preventable child deaths
Number of children
under 5 that died in low
and lower middle income
countries in 2012
5.7
million
1
Reduction in deaths in
low and lower middle
income countries:
If all women had
primary education
15%
fewer child deaths
Saving
0.9 million
lives
2
If all women had
secondary education
49%
fewer child deaths
Saving
2.8 million
lives
Sources: Gakidou (2013); Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (2013).
25
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
© Amina Sayeed/UNESCO
SUMMARY
Providing
all women
in poor
countries
with
secondary
education
would
reduce
stunting
by 26%
26
Education – especially education that empowers
women – is key to tackling malnutrition, the
underlying cause of more than 45% of child deaths.
Educated mothers are more likely to know about
appropriate health and hygiene practices at home,
and have more power to ensure that household
resources are allocated so as to meet children’s
nutrition needs. In low and lower middle income
countries, providing all women with a primary
education would reduce stunting – a robust indicator
of malnutrition – by 4%, or 1.7 million children;
providing a secondary education would reduce
stunting by 26%, or 11.9 million children.
By age 1, adverse effects of malnutrition on life
prospects are likely to be irreversible. Infants in
Peru whose mothers had reached lower secondary
education were 60% less likely to be stunted than
children whose mothers had no education.
Education promotes healthy societies
Education helps people understand democracy,
promotes the tolerance and trust that underpin
it, and motivates people to participate in politics.
Education also has a vital role in preventing
environmental degradation and limiting the
causes and effects of climate change. And it can
empower women to overcome discrimination and
assert their rights.
Education improves people’s understanding
of politics and how to participate in it. Across
12 sub-Saharan African countries, 63% of
individuals without formal schooling had an
understanding of democracy, compared with
71% of those with primary education and 85% of
those with secondary. People with higher levels
of education are more interested in politics and
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
so more likely to seek information. In Turkey, for
example, the share of those who said they were
interested in politics rose from 40% among those
with primary education to 52% among those with
secondary education.
Education increases people’s support for
democracy, particularly where there have
been recent democratic transitions. Across 18
sub-Saharan African countries, those of voting age
with primary education were 1.5 times more likely
to express support for democracy than those
with no education, and twice as likely if they had
completed secondary education.
Educated people are more likely to vote. In 14 Latin
American countries, turnout was five percentage
points higher for those with primary education and
nine percentage points higher for individuals with
secondary education compared to those with no
education. The effect was larger in countries
where average levels of education were lower,
such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Paraguay.
Education also encourages other forms of political
participation. In Argentina, China and Turkey,
citizens were twice as likely to sign a petition or
boycott products if they had secondary education
than if they just had primary education.
Education has an indispensable role in
strengthening the bonds that hold communities
and societies together. In Latin America, people
with secondary education were 47% less likely
than those with primary education to express
intolerance for people of a different race. In the
Arab States, people with secondary education
were 14% less likely than those with only primary
education to express intolerance towards people of
a different religion. In sub-Saharan Africa, people
with primary education were 10% less likely to
express intolerance towards people with HIV and
23% less likely if they had a secondary education. In
Central and Eastern Europe, those with secondary
education were 16% less likely than those who had
not completed secondary education to express
intolerance towards immigrants.
SUMMARY
Education also helps overcome gender biases in
political behaviour to deepen democracy. In India,
reducing the gender literacy gap by 40% increased
the probability of women standing for state
assembly election by 16% and the share of votes
that they received by 13%.
Education lowers tolerance towards corruption and
helps build accountability. In 31 countries, those
with secondary education were one-sixth more
likely than average to complain about deficient
government services.
Increasing access to school for all generally
reduces feelings of injustice in society that have
fuelled many conflicts. But it needs to increase
equally for all population groups; otherwise,
perceived unfairness can reinforce disillusionment.
In 55 low and middle income countries where
the level of educational inequality doubled, the
probability of conflict more than doubled, from
3.8% to 9.5%.
By improving knowledge, instilling values,
fostering beliefs and shifting attitudes,
education has considerable potential to change
environmentally harmful lifestyles and behaviour.
A key way in which education can increase
environmental awareness and concern is by
improving understanding of the science behind
climate change and other environmental issues.
Students with higher science scores across
57 countries reported being more aware of
complex environmental issues. Similarly, across
29 mostly high income countries, 25% of people
with less than secondary education expressed
concern for the environment, compared with
37% of people with secondary education and
46% of people with tertiary education.
In Argentina,
China and
Turkey,
citizens are
twice as
likely to sign
a petition if
they have
secondary
education
Education is also critical for helping people adapt
to the consequences of climate change, especially
in poorer countries, where threats to livelihoods
are being felt most strongly by farmers dependent
on rain-fed agriculture. In Ethiopia, six years of
education increased by 20% the chance that a
27
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
LEARNING LESSENS EARLY MARRIAGES AND BIRTHS
Women with higher levels of education are less likely
to get married or have children at an early age
Child marriage
1
2
14%
64%
fewer marriages if all girls
had primary education
fewer marriages if all
girls had secondary
education
2,459,000
1,044,000
Child marriages for all girls by
age 15 in sub-Saharan Africa
and South and West Asia
2,867,000
Early births
2
1
10%
59%
3,071,000
1,393,000
fewer girls would become fewer girls would become
pregnant if all girls had
pregnant if all girls had
primary education
secondary education
Early births for all girls under
17 in sub-Saharan Africa and
South and West Asia
3,397,000
Fertility rate*
1
2
No
education
Primary
education
Secondary
education
6.7
5.8
3.9
Average number of
births per woman in
sub-Saharan Africa
*Fertility rate is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime
Sources: EFA Global Monitoring Report team calculations (2013), based on Demographic and Health Surveys; UNPD (2011).
28
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
farmer would adapt to climate change through
techniques such as practising soil conservation,
varying planting dates and changing crop varieties.
Education can empower women to claim their
rights and overcome barriers that prevent them
from getting a fair share of the fruits of overall
progress. Having the freedom to choose one’s
spouse is one such right. Women in India with at
least secondary education were 30 percentage
points more likely to have a say over their choice of
spouse than their less educated peers.
Likewise, ensuring that girls stay in school is one of
the most effective ways to prevent child marriage. If
all girls completed primary school in sub-Saharan
Africa and South and West Asia, the number of
girls getting married by age 15 would fall by 14%;
with secondary education, 64% fewer girls would
get married (Infographic: Learning Lessens Early
Marriages and Births).
Women with more education tend to have fewer
children, which benefits them, their families and
society more generally. One reason for this is
because education allows women to have a greater
influence on family size. In Pakistan, only 30% of
women with no education believe they have a say
over how many children they have, compared with
52% of women with primary education and 63% of
those with lower secondary education.
In some regions, education has been a key factor in
bringing forward the demographic transition. Other
parts of the world are lagging, however, particularly
sub-Saharan Africa, where women average 5.4
live births. In the region, women with no education
have 6.7 births. The figure falls to 5.8 for those with
primary education and more than halves, to 3.9, for
those with secondary education.
Conclusion
Education’s
power to
transform
lives should
secure it
a central
place in the
post-2015
framework
The striking evidence laid out in this chapter
demonstrates not only education’s capacity to
accelerate progress towards other development
goals, but also how best to tap that potential,
most of all by making sure that access to good
quality education is available to all, regardless of
their circumstances. Education’s unique power
should secure it a central place in the post-2015
development framework, and in the plans of
policy-makers in poor and rich countries alike.
© Amina Sayeed/UNESCO
Staying in school longer also gives girls more
confidence to make choices that avert the health
risks of early births and births in quick succession.
Currently one in seven girls have children before
age 17 in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West
Asia. In these regions, 10% fewer girls would
become pregnant if they all had primary education,
and 59% fewer would if they all had secondary
education. This would result in around 2 million
fewer early births.
SUMMARY
29
SUMMARY
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Part 3: Supporting teachers
to end the learning crisis
A lack of attention to education quality and a
failure to reach the marginalized have contributed
to a learning crisis that needs urgent attention.
Worldwide, 250 million children – many of them
from disadvantaged backgrounds – are not learning
even basic literacy and numeracy skills, let alone
the further skills they need to get decent work and
lead fulfilling lives.
improves for all. Adequately funded national
education plans that aim explicitly to meet the
needs of the disadvantaged and that ensure
equitable access to well-trained teachers must be
a policy priority. Attracting and retaining the best
teachers as a means to end the learning crisis
requires a delicate juggling act on the part of
policy-makers (see illustration).
To solve the learning crisis, all children must
have teachers who are trained, motivated and
enjoy teaching, who can identify and support weak
learners, and who are backed by well-managed
education systems.
To ensure that all children are learning, teachers
also need the support of an appropriate curriculum
and assessment system that pays particular
attention to the needs of children in early grades,
when the most vulnerable are in danger of dropping
out. Beyond teaching the basics, teachers must help
children gain important transferable skills to help
them become responsible global citizens.
As this Report shows, governments can increase
access while also making sure that learning
30
© UNESCO/Wild is the Game
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
The learning crisis hits the disadvantaged
hardest
sentence, these children are ill equipped to make
the transition to secondary education.
Despite impressive gains in access to education
over the past decade, improvements in quality
have not always kept pace. Many countries are
not ensuring that their children achieve even the
most basic skills in reading and mathematics.
The disadvantaged are the most likely to suffer
because of insufficient numbers of trained teachers,
overstretched infrastructure and inadequate
materials. Yet it is possible for countries to
extend access to school while also improving
equitable learning.
There is a vast divide between regions in learning
achievement. In North America and Western
Europe, 96% of children stay in school until grade
4 and achieve the minimum reading standards,
compared with only one-third of children in South
and West Asia and two-fifths in sub-Saharan Africa
(Figure 13). These two regions account for more
than three-quarters of those not crossing the
minimum learning threshold.
The global learning crisis: action is urgent
Of the world’s 650 million primary school age
children, at least 250 million are not learning the
basics in reading and mathematics. Of these,
almost 120 million have little or no experience of
primary school, having not even reached grade 4.
The remaining 130 million are in primary school
but have not achieved the minimum benchmarks
for learning. Often unable to understand a simple
SUMMARY
The cost of
250 million
children not
learning the
basics is
equivalent
to US$129
billion
The learning crisis is extensive. New analysis shows
that less than half of children are learning the
basics in 21 out of the 85 countries with full data
available. Of these, 17 are in sub-Saharan Africa; the
others are India, Mauritania, Morocco and Pakistan.
This learning crisis has costs not only for the future
ambitions of children, but also for the current
finances of governments. The cost of 250 million
children not learning the basics is equivalent
to US$129 billion, or 10% of global spending on
primary education.
© Nguyen Thanh Tuan/UNESCO
31
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SUMMARY
Figure 13: 250 million children are failing to learn the basics in reading
Percentage of children of primary school age who reached grade 4 and achieved minimum
learning standard in reading, by region
also lag far behind their wealthier peers. In
El Salvador, 42% of children from the poorest
households complete primary education and
master the basics, compared with 84% of those
from richest households.
World
North America and
Western Europe
Central and
Eastern Europe
Girls in poor households face some of the worst
disadvantages, indicating that there is an urgent
need to tackle gender gaps through education
policies. In Benin, for example, around 60% of rich
boys stay in school and attain basic numeracy skills,
compared with 6% of poor girls.
Central Asia
Latin America and
the Caribbean
East Asia and
the Pacific
Arab States
Sub-Saharan Africa
South and West Asia
0
20
40
60
80
100
Children of primary school age (%)
Reached grade 4 and learned the basics
Reached grade 4 but did not learn the basics
Did not reach grade 4
Notes: The definition of children who reached grade 4 is based on the expected cohort completion rate method. The definition
of achievement of a minimum learning standard is based on an anchoring process that transforms the results from different
surveys to a common scale.
Sources: EFA Global Monitoring Report team calculations based on (1) expected cohort survival rate to grade 4: UIS database;
(2) learning achievement: Altinok (2013a), using data from the 2011 PIRLS, 2007 SACMEQ, 2004–2008 PASEC, 2006 SERCE;
and analysis by the 2012 ASER India and 2012 ASER Pakistan survey teams.
Global disparities mask huge inequalities
within countries
While average figures on learning achievement
provide an overall picture of the scale of the learning
crisis, they can conceal large disparities within
countries. Poverty, gender, location, language,
ethnicity, disability and other factors mean some
children are likely to get less support from schools
to improve their learning.
How much a child learns is strongly influenced by
family wealth. Analysis of 20 African countries for
this year’s Report shows that children from richer
households are more likely not only to complete
school, but also to achieve a minimum level of
learning. By contrast, in 15 of the countries, no more
than one in five poor children reach the last grade
and learn the basics.
In Latin America, where performance is higher in
general, children from disadvantaged backgrounds
32
Living in a disadvantaged area – especially rural
ones, which often lack teachers and teaching
resources – is a huge barrier to learning. In the
United Republic of Tanzania, only 25% of poor
children in rural areas learn the basics, compared
with 63% of rich children in urban areas. In some
Latin American countries, including El Salvador,
Guatemala, Panama and Peru, achievement gaps in
mathematics and reading between rural and urban
students exceed 15 percentage points.
Location-related disadvantages begin in the early
grades and widen. In Ghana, urban students were
twice as likely as rural students to reach minimum
levels of English in 2011 in grade 3, and more than
three times as likely by grade 6.
Geographical disadvantage is often aggravated
by poverty and gender. In Balochistan province,
Pakistan, only 45% of children of grade 5 age could
solve a two-digit subtraction, compared with 73% in
wealthier Punjab province. Only around one-quarter
of girls from poor households in Balochistan
achieved basic numeracy skills, while boys from
rich households in the province fared much better,
approaching the average in Punjab.
The discrimination some indigenous or ethnic
groups face is reinforced by the fact that the
language used in the classroom may not be one
that they speak. In Peru in 2011, Spanish speakers
were more than seven times as likely as indigenous
language speakers to reach a satisfactory standard
in reading. Well-designed bilingual programmes
taught by qualified teachers can help children
overcome this challenge.
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Children who learn less are more likely to leave
school early. In Ethiopia, India, Peru and Viet Nam,
children who achieved lower scores in mathematics
at age 12 were more likely than others to drop out
by age 15. In Viet Nam, for instance, almost half
the poorer performers at age 12 had dropped out
by age 15, compared with around one in five of the
stronger performers.
The disadvantages children face in gaining
access to school and remaining there will stay
with them into secondary school. In South Africa,
for example, there is a vast gap in learning between
rich and poor, with only 14% of poor adolescents
achieving the minimum standard in mathematics,
comparable to the performance of poor students
in Ghana, a country that has less than one-fifth
South Africa’s wealth. Such gaps are not inevitable.
Botswana has achieved much higher levels of
learning thanks largely to its much narrower gap
between rich and poor.
In some countries, the gap between rich and poor
becomes more apparent in later grades. In Chile,
for example, while the gap is narrow at grade 4, 77%
of rich students achieve the minimum standards by
grade 8, compared with 44% of poor students.
Rich countries are also failing to ensure that the
marginalized can learn
While rich countries’ achievement levels are
generally higher, their education systems also
fail significant minorities. For example, over
10% of grade 8 students in Norway and England
performed below minimum learning levels in
mathematics in 2011.
While East Asian countries, including Japan,
the Republic of Korea and Singapore, have
shown it is possible to overcome the disadvantages
those living in poverty face, the same cannot be
said for some OECD countries and for wealthy
countries in the Arab States. The chance of a poor
student in Oman achieving minimum learning
standards, for example, is similar to that of a
student in less wealthy countries, such as Ghana.
In New Zealand, only two-thirds of poor students
achieved the minimum standards, compared with
97% of rich students.
SUMMARY
Immigrant students face a high risk of
marginalization in education, resulting in lower
levels of learning achievement. In France, Germany
and the United Kingdom, over 80% of 15-year-old
students achieve minimum benchmarks in reading.
But immigrants perform far worse: in the United
Kingdom, the proportion of immigrants making it
above the minimum benchmark is no better than
the average for Turkey, while Germany’s immigrants
are on a par with students in Chile. Immigrants in
France face particular problems, with less than 60%
passing the minimum benchmark – equivalent to
the average for students in Mexico.
Indigenous children in high income countries
often face disadvantage, and the gap in learning
outcomes with the rest of the population has
been persistent. In Australia, around two-thirds
of indigenous students achieved the minimum
benchmark in grade 8 between 1994/95 and
2011, compared with almost 90% of their
non-indigenous peers.
Less than
60% of
immigrants
in France
passed the
minimum
learning
benchmark
Improving learning while expanding access
It is often claimed that expanding access to primary
school in poorer countries means lowering the
quality of education. Yet, although vast numbers of
children are not learning the basics, some countries
have been able to get more children into school
while ensuring that they learn once there. This
balance is particularly impressive given that new
entrants are more likely to come from marginalized
households. Even so, far more needs to be done
to bridge the learning gap more quickly, even in
richer countries.
The United Republic of Tanzania made great strides
in the numbers of students reaching the end of
primary school, partly because primary school fees
were abolished in 2001. Between 2000 and 2007,
the proportion of children who completed primary
school rose from half to around two-thirds, while
the proportion learning the basics in mathematics
increased from 19% to 36%. This is equivalent to
around 1.5 million additional children learning the
basics. While it is unacceptable that 27% were in
school but not learning the basics, the fact that
the problems with quality were already apparent
in 2000 suggests that they were more inherent in
the education system than directly associated with
education expansion.
33
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In Malawi and Uganda, access and quality did not
improve significantly between 2000 and 2007, and
the learning gap between rich and poor widened.
These countries face a triple challenge, needing to
strengthen access, quality and equity.
At secondary level, too, efforts to increase access
have not always succeeded in increasing learning
and reaching the disadvantaged. In Mexico, as
access increased, the share of students
performing above minimum benchmarks also
increased, from one-third in 2003 to one-half in
2009. Targeted social protection programmes
aimed at disadvantaged families helped improve
learning outcomes for the rich and poor alike. In
Ghana, by contrast, while secondary enrolment
increased from 35% in 2003 to 46% in 2009, and
performance in numeracy also increased by
10 percentage points, gender gaps in learning
more than doubled and the poorest barely
benefited at all.
Malaysia experienced a particularly worrying trend
of worsening learning outcomes coupled with
widening inequality and an increasing number of
adolescents out of school. In 2003, the vast majority
of adolescents passed the minimum benchmark,
whether rich or poor. However, only around half the
poorest boys reached the minimum benchmark in
2011, compared with over 90% in 2003. Poor boys
in Malaysia went from being similar to average
performers in the United States to being similar
to those in Botswana.
Poor quality education leaves a legacy of illiteracy
In low
and lower
middle
income
countries,
one-quarter
of youth
cannot read
a sentence
34
The quality of education during childhood has a
marked bearing on youth literacy. New analysis for
this Report, based on direct assessments of literacy
in household surveys, shows that youth illiteracy is
more widespread than previously believed: around
175 million young people in low and lower middle
income countries – equivalent to around onequarter of the youth population – cannot read all or
part of a sentence. In sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of
young people are not able to do so (Figure 14).
Young women are the worst affected of all, making
up 61% of youth who are not literate. In South and
West Asia, two out of three of young people who
cannot read are young women.
Comparisons among countries expose the
widespread problems of illiteracy. In 9 of the
41 low and lower middle income countries in
the analysis, more than half of 15- to 24-year-olds
are not literate. All these countries are in
sub-Saharan Africa.
The analysis confirms the assumption that children
need to spend at least four years in school to
become literate: among those who have spent
four years or less in school, around 77% are not
able to read all or part of a sentence. In 9 of the 41
countries analysed, more than half of young people
have spent no more than four years in school, and
almost none of them are literate.
Spending five or six years in school, equivalent in
some systems to completing a full cycle of primary
schooling, does not guarantee literacy, however. In
the 41 countries in the analysis, around 20 million
young people still cannot read all or part of a
sentence – equivalent to one in three of those who
leave school after grade 5 or 6.
Young people from poorer households are far less
likely to be literate. Among the countries analysed,
more than 80% of those from rich households can
read a sentence in 32 countries, but 80% of the poor
can do so in only 4 countries. At the other end of
the scale, less than half of poor youth can read a
sentence in 22 countries, while the rich fall below
Figure 14: Less than three-quarters of young people in low and lower
middle income countries are literate
Youth literacy rate, by gender, selected regions and country income groups
100
80
Youth literacy rate (%)
SUMMARY
60
Male
Average
Female
40
20
0
Low income
countries
Lower middle
income
countries
Sub-Saharan
Africa
South and
West Asia
Source: EFA Global Monitoring Report team analysis (2013), based on Demographic and Health
Survey data.
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this threshold only in Niger. In several countries,
including Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra
Leone, the difference in youth literacy rates between
rich and poor is more than 50 percentage points.
Disadvantages in acquiring basic skills are further
compounded by a combination of poverty, gender,
location and ethnicity. In Senegal, only 20% of rural
young women could read in everyday situations
in 2010, compared with 65% of urban young men.
In Indonesia, almost all rich young women in Bali
province have literacy skills, while just 60% of poor
women in Papua province are literate.
These outcomes may reflect the combined effects
of poverty, isolation, discrimination and cultural
practices. However, they also echo failures of
education policy to provide learning opportunities
for the most disadvantaged populations, and they
indicate an urgent need to provide these people with
a second chance.
There are some signs of improvement in youth
literacy that offer hope. Thanks to the expansion of
primary schooling over the past decade, the youth
literacy rate increased in Ethiopia from 34% in 2000
to 52% in 2011. Youth literacy has also improved in
Nepal, especially among the most disadvantaged,
who started with very low levels of literacy. Literacy
among poor young women increased from 20% in
2001 to 55% in 2011.
Information on how much children with disabilities
are learning is so scarce that analysis is difficult.
Uganda provides a rare example where information
is sufficient to compare literacy rates of young
people according to types of impairment. In 2011,
around 60% of young people with no identified
impairment were literate, compared with 47% of
those with physical or hearing impairments and
38% of those with mental impairments.
Striving for equal learning, including for children
and youth with disabilities, requires identifying the
particular difficulties children and young people
with various types of disadvantage face, and
implementing policies to tackle them.
SUMMARY
Making teaching quality a national priority
Strong national policies that give a high priority
to improving learning and teaching are essential
to ensure that all children in school obtain the
skills and knowledge they are meant to acquire.
Education plans should describe goals and
establish benchmarks against which governments
can be held to account, as well as ways to achieve
the goals. Improving learning, especially among the
most disadvantaged children, needs to be made a
strategic objective. Plans should include a range
of approaches to improve teacher quality, devised
in consultation with teachers and teacher unions.
They also need to guarantee that strategies will be
backed by sufficient resources.
Quality must be made a strategic objective in
education plans
The global learning crisis cannot be overcome
unless policies aim to improve learning for the
disadvantaged. Of 40 national education plans
reviewed for this Report, 26 list improved learning
outcomes as a strategic objective. While the plans of
all 40 countries address the needs of disadvantaged
groups to some extent, learning is often only
addressed as a by-product of increased access.
Ethiopia’s
youth
literacy rate
increased
from 34% in
2000 to 52%
in 2011
To improve learning for all, national education
plans must improve teacher management and
quality. Only 17 of the 40 plans include strategies for
improving teacher education programmes, and only
16 envisage further training of teacher educators.
It is even less common for plans to recognize
explicitly that improving teaching quality can
enhance learning outcomes. In Kenya, in-service
training is aimed at substantially boosting the
learning of primary school leavers in poorly
performing districts. South Africa and Sri Lanka
link recruitment of teachers with improvements in
quality and learning.
Governments need to get incentives right to attract
and retain the best teachers. Of the 40 plans
reviewed, 10 include reforms to improve teacher
pay and 18 emphasize better career paths and
promotion prospects.
35
SUMMARY
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Only some of the plans target teacher reforms at
improving learning for disadvantaged students,
mainly by getting teachers into disadvantaged areas.
Among the 28 plans that aim to send teachers to
disadvantaged areas, 22 aim to provide incentives,
such as housing benefits and salary supplements.
In 14 countries, education plans include incentives
to promote deployment to rural areas, while 8,
including Afghanistan, actively encourage female
teachers. Cambodia’s plan is notable for strategies
to recruit teachers from target areas and ethnic
groups and deploy them where they are most
needed. In remote areas, where student numbers
are often small, teachers may have to teach more
than one age group at the same time. In Cambodia,
Kenya and Papua New Guinea, there are plans to
provide training in multigrade teaching.
Few plans highlight the need for support to students
who are falling behind. Guyana’s is one exception; it
gives a high priority to building teachers’ capacity to
deliver targeted programmes.
For plans to be successfully implemented,
they need to be backed by sufficient resources,
but only 16 of the 40 policy documents reviewed
include a budget breakdown. Countries assign
different levels of importance in their budgets to
policies aimed at improving education quality:
they amount to over a fifth of the budget in Papua
New Guinea, but to 5% or less in Palestine, for
example. Few plans earmark expenditure for the
disadvantaged, however.
In Bolivia,
teacher
unions
campaigned
to ensure
that
indigenous
rights were
enshrined
in the
constitution
Policies can only be effective if those responsible
for implementing them are involved in shaping
them. However, a survey in 10 countries showed that
only 23% of teachers thought they had influence
over policy and practice. Given their reach, teacher
unions are key partners for governments. In
some countries, engaging teacher unions has
improved policies aimed at helping disadvantaged
groups. In the Plurinational State of Bolivia,
for example, teacher unions campaigned to
ensure that indigenous rights were enshrined in
the constitution.
Overall, teachers and their unions can help make
sure policies are effective. Thus it is important to
include them from the early stages in designing
strategies aimed at tackling learning deficits.
36
Getting enough teachers into classrooms
The quality of education is held back in many of the
poorest countries by a lack of teachers, which often
results in large class sizes in early grades and in the
poorest areas. Future teacher recruitment needs
are determined by current deficits, demographics,
enrolment trends and numbers of children out
of school. Analysis by the UNESCO Institute for
Statistics shows that, between 2011 and 2015,
5.2 million teachers – including replacement
and additional teachers – need to be recruited to
ensure that there are sufficient teachers to achieve
universal primary education. This amounts to over
1 million teachers per year, equivalent to about 5%
of the current primary school teaching force.
Most initial teacher education programmes last
at least two years. With 57 million children still
out of school, it is unlikely that countries with
a lack of teachers will be able to meet the 2015
Education for All deadline for achieving universal
primary education. Nevertheless, countries must
start planning now to make up the shortfall. If the
deadline were extended to 2020, accounting for
projected increases in enrolment, the number of
teachers required would rise to 13.1 million over
9 years. If it were extended to 2030, 20.6 million
teachers would be needed over 19 years.
Of the teachers required between 2011 and 2015,
3.7 million are needed to replace teachers who
retire, change occupations or leave due to illness or
death. The remaining 1.6 million are the additional
teachers needed to make up the shortfall, address
expanding enrolment and underwrite quality by
ensuring that there are no more than 40 students
for every teacher (Figure 15). Thus, around 400,000
additional teachers need to be recruited each year if
there are to be sufficient teachers by 2015.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 58% of the
additional primary teachers needed, requiring
approximately 225,000 per year between 2011 and
2015. However, over the past decade the average
annual increase in the region has been only 102,000.
Nigeria has by far the largest gap to fill. Between
2011 and 2015, it needs 212,000 primary school
teachers, 13% of the global total. Of the 10 countries
needing the most additional primary teachers, all
but one are in sub-Saharan Africa, the exception
being Pakistan.
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Figure 15: Globally 1.6 million additional teachers are
needed by 2015
Total number of teachers needed to achieve universal
primary education by 2015
Total primary teacher recruitment needed (millions)
6
5
Sub-Saharan
Africa
1.6
4
All other
0.9
3
Sub-Saharan
Africa
2
3.7
1
0
0.7
All other
2011–2015
Replacement for attrition
Additional teachers needed
Source: UIS (2013).
The challenge of recruiting teachers becomes
even greater when the needs of lower secondary
education are taken into account. To achieve
universal lower secondary education by 2030 with 32
students per teacher, an additional 5.1 million would
be needed, or 268,000 per year. Sub-Saharan Africa
accounts for half of the additional lower secondary
school teachers needed over this period.
It is unlikely that the countries with the most severe
teacher gaps can recruit the numbers needed by
2015. Of the 93 countries that need to find additional
primary school teachers by 2015, only 37 will be able
to bridge the gap; 29 will not even be able to fill the
gap by 2030. Meanwhile, 148 countries need more
teachers for lower secondary schools by 2015; 29
countries will not have filled this gap by 2030.
To fill the teacher gap by 2015, some countries
need to speed up expansion of their teacher
force. Rwanda and Uganda would need to
expand recruitment by 6%, on average, compared
with a current average increase of 3% per year. In
Malawi, the teaching force is growing by just 1%
per year, which is far from sufficient to reduce the
pupil/teacher ratio from 76:1 to 40:1. For Malawi to
meet the universal primary education goal by 2015,
it would need to increase its teaching force by 15%
annually between 2011 and 2015.
SUMMARY
Many poor countries will not be able to fill their
teacher gap simply because they do not have
enough upper secondary school graduates – the
minimum qualification for primary teacher trainees.
In 8 out of 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, at
least 5% of all upper secondary school graduates
in 2020 would need to be drawn into teaching to
fill the teacher gap, rising to almost 25% in Niger.
By comparison, just over 3% of those in the labour
force with at least secondary education are primary
school teachers in middle income countries.
Teachers need not only to be recruited, but
also to be trained. Many countries, especially in
sub-Saharan Africa, also need to train existing
teachers. Mali, for example, recruited teachers at
a rate of 9% per year over the past decade, which
helped lower the number of pupils per teacher from
62 in 1999 to 48 in 2011. However, many of these
teachers are untrained. The result is that Mali’s
ratio of pupils per trained teacher, 92:1, is one of
the world’s highest. On its past trend of trained
teacher recruitment, Mali would not achieve a
ratio of 40 pupils per trained teacher until 2030.
Countries that have many untrained teachers need
to find ways to train them. In 10 out of 27 countries
with available data, this challenge is greater than
that of recruiting and training new teachers. In
Benin, 47% of teachers were trained in 2011. The
country needs to expand teacher recruitment by
just 1.4% per year to achieve UPE by 2020, but the
number of existing teachers who need to be trained
would have to grow by almost 9% per year, well
above Benin’s 6% average annual growth rate since
1999 for trained teachers.
29 countries
will not fill
the primary
school
teacher gap
by 2030
The shortage of trained teachers is likely to affect
disadvantaged areas in particular. In the northern
state of Kano, one of the poorer parts of Nigeria, the
pupil/trained teacher ratio exceeded 100 in 2009/10,
with at least 150 pupils per trained teacher in the
most disadvantaged 25% of schools.
Children in the early grades who live in remote
areas often face a double disadvantage. In Ethiopia,
for example, where 48% of teachers are trained,
only around 20% of teachers were trained in grades
1 to 4 in 2010, compared with 83% in grades 5 to 8.
37
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Countries that require additional teachers will
have to increase their overall budgets for teacher
salaries. New analysis by the UNESCO Institute
for Statistics for this Report finds that US$4 billion
annually is needed in sub-Saharan Africa to pay
the salaries of the additional primary school
teachers required to achieve UPE by 2020, after
taking into account projected economic growth.
This is equivalent to 19% of the region’s total
education budget in 2011. Nigeria alone accounts
for two-fifths of the gap.
Donors
spend only
US$189
million per
year on
teacher
education
While the required increases may seem vast, most
countries should be able to meet them if their
economies grow as projected and if they dedicate a
larger share of their GDP to education while staying
within the benchmark of 3% allocated to primary
education. On average, sub-Saharan African
countries would have to increase the share of the
budget they allocate to education from 12% to 14%
in 2011 to close the teacher gap by 2020.
The financing challenge is inevitably greater for
lower secondary school. In sub-Saharan Africa,
recruiting enough teachers to achieve universal
lower secondary education by 2030 would add
US$9.5 billion to the annual education budget.
While many countries should be able to meet the
cost of recruiting and paying the required additional
primary teachers from their national budgets, they
will also need to pay for teacher training, as well
as school construction and learning materials,
to ensure that children receive an education of
a good quality. Expanding the lower secondary
teacher workforce will place a further burden on
national budgets. Some of the poorest countries
are therefore likely to face a substantial financing
gap and will require the support of aid donors.
This need is likely to be even greater when the cost
of expanding teacher education programmes is
taken into account.
However, between 2008 and 2011, donors spent only
US$189 million per year, on average, on pre-service
and in-service teacher education programmes,
equivalent to 2% of the education aid budget. While
the countries most in need are in sub-Saharan
Africa, the largest country recipients of this aid
included richer middle income countries such as
Brazil, China and Indonesia.
38
Four strategies to provide the best teachers
Policy-makers need to give teachers every chance
to put their motivation, energy, knowledge and skills
to work in improving learning for all. This Report
describes the four strategies that governments need
to adopt to attract and retain the best teachers,
improve teacher education, allocate teachers
more fairly and provide incentives in the form of
appropriate salaries and attractive career paths. It
then highlights the areas of teacher governance that
need to be strengthened to ensure that the benefits
of these four strategies are realized.
Strategy 1: Attract the best teachers
I chose to be a teacher because I believe that
education has the power to transform the society we
live in. What motivates me to be a good teacher is to
be an active agent in this change that is so necessary
for my country to fight against discrimination, injustice,
racism, corruption, poverty.
– Ana, teacher, Lima, Peru
The first step to getting good teachers is to attract
the best and most motivated candidates into the
profession. Many people who decide to become
teachers are driven by the satisfaction of helping
students learn, fulfil their potential and develop into
confident, responsible citizens.
It is not enough just to want to teach. People
should enter the profession having received a good
education themselves. They need to have at least
completed secondary schooling of appropriate
quality and relevance, so that they have a sound
knowledge of the subjects they will be teaching and
the ability to acquire the skills needed to teach.
Teaching does not always draw the best candidates,
however. In some countries, teaching is seen as
a second-class job for those who do not do well
enough academically to enter more prestigious
careers, such as medicine or engineering. The
level of qualification required to enter teaching
is a signal of the field’s professional status. To
elevate the status of teaching and attract talented
applicants, for example, Egypt has introduced more
stringent entry requirements, requiring candidates
to have strong performance in secondary school as
well as a favourable interview assessment. Once
selected, candidates also have to pass an entrance
examination to establish whether they match the
profile of a good teacher.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Making sure there are enough female teachers
and recruiting teachers from a wide range of
backgrounds are important factors in providing
an inclusive, good quality education. Flexible
policies for entry qualifications may be required
to improve diversity of the teaching force. In South
Sudan, women make up about 65% of the post-war
population, yet less than 10% of all teachers are
women. To increase the number of female teachers,
financial and material incentives have been given to
over 4,500 girls to complete secondary school and to
women trainees to enter the teaching profession.
Recruiting teachers from under-represented groups
to work in their own communities guarantees
that children have teachers familiar with their
culture and language. Flexible policies on entry
requirements can help increase the number of
candidates recruited from ethnic minority groups. In
Cambodia, where teacher trainees normally have to
have completed grade 12, this requirement is waived
for remote areas where upper secondary education
is unavailable, increasing the pool of teachers from
ethnic minorities.
Strategy 2: Improve teacher education so all
children can learn
Initial teacher education should impart the
skills needed to teach – especially for teaching
the disadvantaged and those in early grades –
and lay the foundation for ongoing training. But
initial teacher education is not always effective
in preparing teachers to deliver good quality,
equitable education.
Trainees need a good understanding of the
subjects they will be teaching. In low income
countries, however, teachers often enter the
profession lacking core subject knowledge
because their own education has been poor. In a
2010 survey of primary schools in Kenya, grade
6 teachers scored only 60% on tests designed for
their students. In such circumstances, teacher
education programmes need to start by ensuring
that all trainees acquire a good understanding of
the subjects they will be teaching.
Teacher education institutions often do not have
time to upgrade weak subject knowledge, partly
because of competing curriculum demands. In
Kenya, teacher trainees are required to take up to
10 subjects and participate in teaching practice
SUMMARY
in the first year. This leaves little time to fill gaps
in subject knowledge. Ghana has addressed this
problem by making trainees pass an examination on
subject knowledge in their first year.
Teachers need not only sound subject knowledge
but also training in how to teach, particularly in
the early grades. However, teachers are seldom
trained in these skills. In Mali, few teachers were
able to teach their pupils how to read. Teachers had
been inadequately prepared to apply the required
teaching methods and did not give sufficient
attention to supporting pupils’ individual reading.
This is no doubt an important reason why nearly
half the pupils in Mali could not read a word in their
own language at the end of grade 2. Teachers are
also rarely prepared for the reality of multilingual
classrooms. In Senegal, for example, only 8% of
trainees expressed any confidence about teaching
reading in local languages.
As a result of inadequate training, including
overemphasis on theory rather than practice, many
newly qualified teachers are not confident that they
have the skills necessary to support children with
more challenging learning needs, including those
with severe physical or intellectual disabilities,
in mainstream classrooms. To address this,
teachers in Viet Nam create individual education
plans for all learners, designing and adapting
activities for children with different learning needs,
and assessing learning outcomes of children
with special needs.
Teacher education should also prepare teachers
for remote or under-resourced schools, where
some teachers need to teach multiple grades,
ages and abilities in one classroom. In some
countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Burkina
Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, at least 10% of
students study in such classrooms. A small project
in Sri Lanka trained teachers to develop lesson
plans and grade-appropriate tasks for classes
combining grades 4 and 5. Results indicated that
such methods had a positive impact on pupils’
achievement in mathematics.
In Kenya,
grade 6
teachers
scored
only 60%
on tests
designed
for their
students
Countries with high student learning
outcomes require trainees to receive practical
training in classrooms before teaching. This is
especially important for teachers who teach in
under-resourced and diverse classrooms, but is
rarely provided. In Pakistan, trainee teachers only
39
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
spend 10% of their training time in classrooms.
To address this need, an NGO teacher education
programme in Malawi includes a full year of
practice teaching in rural districts. Some 72% of
the participants said the school practice component
was the area of study that most prepared them
for teaching in rural areas. In addition, 80% of
them gained experience in providing remedial
support to students, compared with 14% in
government colleges.
In Turkey, a
pre-service
course on
gender
equity
had a
significant
impact on
female
teachers’
gender
attitudes
Teachers also need training in how attitudes to
gender can affect learning outcomes. In Turkey, a
one-term pre-service course on gender equity had
a significant impact on female teachers’ gender
attitudes and awareness.
All teachers require continuing support once they
reach the classroom to enable them to reflect on
teaching practices, to foster motivation and to
help them adapt to change, such as using a new
curriculum or language of instruction. Ongoing
training can also provide teachers with new ideas
about how to support weak learners. Teachers who
have received some in-service training are generally
found to teach better than those who have not,
although it depends on the purpose and quality
of the training.
Ongoing training is even more important for
teachers who enter classrooms with little or no
pre-service teacher education, or whose training
has not sufficiently exposed them to the reality
of the classroom. In Benin, many teachers have
been hired as community or contract teachers with
no pre-service teacher education. A programme
designed in 2007 offers them three years of training
to give them qualifications equivalent to those of
civil service teachers.
Teachers in conflict zones are among those most
in need of a coherent strategy to upgrade their
skills. In the Dadaab refugee camps in northern
Kenya, 90% of teachers are hired from the refugee
community, only 2% of whom are qualified.
Refugee teachers are ineligible for admission
to higher education institutions in Kenya, and
so require alternative qualification options. A
teacher management and development strategy
for 2013–2015 aims to provide them with training,
including school-based practice. The strategy also
recommends qualification and certification options
for teachers who meet minimum higher education
admission requirements, as well as options for the
majority who do not meet the requirements.
Ongoing training can bridge gaps in the quality
40
and relevance of pre-service teacher education,
but often fails to foster the skills teachers need to
respond to particular learning needs, especially
in the early grades. An Early Grade Reading
Assessment in Liberia found that around
one-third of grade 2 students were unable to
read a word. As a result, in 2008, the Ministry of
Education launched a new programme consisting
of teacher education and support, structured
lesson plans, teaching resource materials,
and books for children to take home. Teachers
participated in an intensive one-week course in
early grade reading instruction and how to use
formative and diagnostic assessment to identify and
support weak learners. This was followed up with
classroom-based support from trained mentors
over two years. Pupils in this programme increased
their reading comprehension scores by 130%,
compared with 33% for non-participants.
In many low income countries, teaching relies
on traditional approaches such as lecturing, rote
learning and repetition, rather than fostering
transferable skills such as critical thinking. A
school-based teacher development programme
in Kenya has shown that training can be effective
in helping teachers adopt learner-centred
methods. The programme, involving self-study
using distance-learning materials and meetings
with tutors at cluster resource centres, led to
teaching becoming more interactive, with improved
use of lesson plans and resources.
The key role that teacher educators play in shaping
teachers’ skills is often the most neglected aspect
of teacher preparation systems, particularly in
developing countries. Many teacher educators
seldom set foot in local schools to learn about the
challenges prospective teachers face. Analysis of six
sub-Saharan African countries found that teacher
educators helping train teachers how to teach
reading skills were rarely experts in approaches
used in the field.
Reforms aimed at helping disadvantaged students
need to ensure that teacher educators are trained
to give teachers appropriate support. In Viet Nam,
many teacher educators had limited awareness
of how to deal with diversity until training was
provided for teacher educators from universities
and colleges to act as experts on inclusive
education in pre-service programmes.
Not only is the quality of teacher education
often insufficient, but many teacher education
institutions also lack the capacity for the huge
SUMMARY
© Karel Prinsloo/ARETE/UNESCO
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
numbers of people needing to be trained, and
expanding capacity is costly. Using technology to
provide training from a distance is one way to reach
larger numbers of trainees. Distance education
programmes must be of adequate quality,
and should be complemented by mentoring and
face-to-face support at key stages.
The extent to which information and communication
technology (ICT) is used in distance learning for
teacher education is dictated by ICT infrastructure
and resources, and the needs of target audiences.
In South Africa, where surveys revealed that only 1%
of teachers had regular Internet access but the vast
majority had access to mobile phones, a teacher
education programme supplements paper-based
distance learning with text messaging. In Malawi,
battery-powered DVD players and interactive
instructional DVDs are used to assist with training.
Distance teacher education programmes could
reach more future teachers at lower cost than
programmes in teacher education institutions. Costs
per student graduating from distance programmes
have been estimated at between one-third and
two-thirds of conventional programmes.
Strategy 3: Get teachers where they are
most needed
Teachers are understandably reluctant to work in
deprived areas, which lack basic facilities such
as electricity, good housing and health care.
If the best teachers seldom work in remote,
rural, poor or dangerous areas, however, the
learning opportunities of children who are already
disadvantaged suffer further as a result of larger
class sizes, high rates of teacher turnover and a
scarcity of trained teachers.
Governments need to devise strategies to ensure
that teachers are equally allocated, but they rarely
do so. In Yemen, schools with 500 students were
found to have between 4 and 27 teachers. In South
Sudan, average pupil/teacher ratios varied from
51:1 in Central Equatoria to 145:1 in Jonglei.
Unequal distribution of teachers is one reason some
children leave school before learning the basics.
In Bangladesh, only 60% of students reach the
last grade of primary school in subdistricts where
there are 75 students per teacher, compared with
three-quarters where there are 30.
In South
Sudan,
pupil/
teacher
ratios
reached
145:1 in
Jonglei
41
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
The unequal allocation of teachers is affected by
four main factors:
Urban bias: Weak infrastructure in rural areas
means teachers are less keen to teach there. In
Swaziland, for example, remote rural schools are
mostly staffed with newly recruited, inexperienced
teachers and teachers with low qualifications.
Ethnicity and language: Because education levels
of ethnic minorities are often lower, fewer can
apply to be teachers. In India, states cannot
fill their caste-based quotas for recruitment of
teachers unless teachers with lower levels of
qualifications are hired.
Gender: Women are less likely than men to
work in disadvantaged areas. In Rwanda, only
10% of primary school teachers were female in
Burera district, compared with 67% in wealthier
Gisagara district.
Subjects: In secondary schools, in particular, there
are often teacher shortages in specific subjects. In
Indonesia, for example, at junior secondary level
there is a surplus of teachers in religion, but a
shortage in computer science.
Average
teacher
salaries
are below
US$10 per
day in
8 countries
To achieve a balance of teachers across the country,
some governments post teachers to disadvantaged
areas. One reason for the Republic of Korea’s
strong and more equitable learning outcomes is
that disadvantaged groups have better access to
more qualified and experienced teachers. Over
three-quarters of teachers in villages have at
least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 32% in
large cities, and 45% have more than 20 years of
experience, compared with 30% in large cities.
Teachers working in disadvantaged schools benefit
from incentives such as an additional stipend,
smaller class sizes, less teaching time, the chance
to choose their next school after teaching in a
difficult area and greater promotion opportunities.
Providing incentives is a way to encourage
teachers to accept difficult postings. Safe housing
is particularly important in encouraging women
to teach in rural areas, as in Bangladesh. The
Gambia introduced an allowance of 30% to 40% of
their base salary for positions in remote regions. By
2007, 24% of teachers had requested a transfer to
hardship schools.
Alternatively, countries can recruit teachers from
within their own communities. In Lesotho, a system
42
of local recruitment allows school management
committees to hire teachers, who apply directly to
the schools for vacant posts. As a result, there is
relatively little difference in pupil/teacher ratios
between rural and urban areas.
Some countries are opening alternative
pathways into teaching to attract highly qualified
professionals with strong subject knowledge.
One approach is exemplified by the Teach for
All programmes in a range of countries, which
recruit graduates with strong subject-level degree
qualifications to teach in schools that predominantly
serve disadvantaged students. Evidence from
evaluations of Teach for America suggests that,
once they have gained some experience, these
teachers help improve students’ learning, provided
they receive some training.
Strategy 4: Provide the right incentives to retain
the best teachers
Salaries are just one of many factors that motivate
teachers, but they are a key consideration in
attracting the best candidates and retaining the best
teachers. Low salaries are likely to damage morale
and can lead teachers to switch to other careers. At
the same time, teacher salaries make up the largest
share of most education budgets, so they need to
be set at a realistic level to ensure that enough
teachers can be recruited.
The level of teacher salaries influences education
quality. In 39 countries, a 15% rise in pay increased
student performance by 6% to 8%. However,
teachers in some countries do not even earn enough
to lift their households above the poverty line. A
teacher who is the main breadwinner, and has at
least four family members to support, needs to earn
at least US$10 per day to keep the family above the
poverty line of US$2 per day per person. However,
average teacher salaries are below this level in eight
countries. In the Central African Republic, GuineaBissau and Liberia, teachers are paid no more than
US$5, on average. Teacher salaries are similarly
low in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where
communities often have to supplement their pay.
Communities that are too poor to do so suffer from
further disadvantage, losing good teachers.
In some countries, few teachers can afford
basic necessities without taking a second job. In
Cambodia, where a teacher salary did not cover the
cost of basic food items in 2008, over two-thirds of
teachers had a second job.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
National data on average teacher pay disguise
variations in pay among different types of teachers:
salaries are often considerably less than average for
teachers at the beginning of their career, unqualified
teachers and those on temporary contracts. In
Malawi, those entering the profession, or lacking
the academic qualifications needed for promotion,
earn less than one-third of teachers in the highest
pay category. Their salary was equivalent to just
US$4 per day in 2007/08.
When teachers are paid less than people in
comparable fields, the best students are less
likely to become teachers, and teachers are
more likely to lose motivation or leave the
profession. In Latin America, teachers are
generally paid above the poverty threshold,
but their salaries do not compare favourably
with those working in professions requiring
similar qualifications. In 2007, professionals
and technicians with similar characteristics
earned 43% more than pre-school and primary
school teachers in Brazil, and 50% more in Peru.
In sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia,
policy-makers have responded to the need to
expand education systems rapidly by recruiting
teachers on temporary contracts with little formal
training. Contract teachers are usually paid
considerably less than civil service teachers; some
are hired directly by the community or by schools.
In West Africa, contract teachers made up half the
teaching force by the mid-2000s. At the end of the
decade, there were far more teachers on temporary
contracts than on civil service contracts in some
of these countries: the proportion reached almost
80% in Mali and Niger and over 60% in Benin and
Cameroon. In Niger, contract teachers earn half as
much as civil service teachers.
In some countries, governments eventually hire
contract teachers as civil service teachers. In Benin,
for example, contract teachers, with the support of
teacher unions, campaigned to obtain more stable
employment conditions and better pay. In 2007, the
government issued a decree absorbing into the civil
service contract all teachers who had achieved the
required qualifications. Thus, despite the share of
contract teachers having increased dramatically,
the average teacher salary in Benin rose by 45%
between 2006 and 2010 as the salaries of contract
and civil service teachers converged.
SUMMARY
In Indonesia, where contract teachers made up
over a third of the primary school teaching force
in 2010, regular teachers earned up to 40 times
their salary. The government ensured that contract
teachers would eventually attain civil service status,
with implications for the education budget: giving
all contract teachers permanent status would
increase the salary bill for basic education by 35%,
to about US$9 billion.
Where contract teachers are paid by the community,
sustaining their services depends on parents’
ability to mobilize funding, putting considerable
financial pressure on poorer communities. In some
cases this can lead to the government taking over
some of the responsibility, ultimately adding to the
budget. In Madagascar, community teachers, who
made up around half of all teachers in 2005/06,
are hired directly by parent-teacher associations
and generally receive less than half of regular
teachers’ salaries. Since 2006, the government has
increasingly taken on the responsibility for paying
community teachers.
While hiring contract teachers to alleviate teacher
shortages can help in the short term, it is unlikely
to meet the long-term need to extend quality
education. Countries that rely heavily on contract
teachers, notably in West Africa, rank at or near the
bottom for education access and learning.
In Peru,
professionals
with similar
characteristics
to teachers
earn 50% more
Teachers’ salaries – and the rates at which they
increase – are conventionally determined by
formal qualifications, the amount of training and
years of experience. But pay structures based on
these criteria do not necessarily lead to better
learning outcomes. Relating teachers’ pay to the
performance of their students is an alternative
approach that has intuitive appeal. This appeal is
supported by PISA data from 28 OECD countries: the
countries where teachers’ salaries are adjusted for
student performance have higher scores in reading,
mathematics and science. However, a closer look
at the evidence on performance-related pay from
around the world does not show clear-cut benefits.
It is difficult to find reliable ways to evaluate which
teachers are the best and add the most value,
as experience from the United States shows.
Performance-related pay can also have unintended
side effects on teaching and learning. In Portugal,
it has led to competition between teachers in ways
that can be harmful for the weakest students.
In Mexico, many teachers are excluded from
43
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
© Nguyen Thanh Tuan/UNESCO
SUMMARY
participating in such programmes, with those
teaching in schools with low achievement at a
disadvantage. Experience in Brazil suggests that
rewarding schools with collective bonuses may be a
more effective way to improve learning outcomes.
In poorer countries, performance-related pay has
rarely been tried on a large scale, but experience
suggests there is a risk of it encouraging teachers
to teach to the test, rather than promoting wider
learning. In an experiment in Kenyan primary
schools, teachers were rewarded for good student
test scores and penalized if students did not
take end-of-year examinations. Test scores and
examination attendance increased, but test scores
did not go up in subject areas that were not taken
into account in the teacher pay formula.
In the
Republic of
Korea, an
experienced
teacher can
earn more
than twice
as much
as a new
teacher
44
A more appropriate way of motivating teachers is
to offer an attractive career path. In some OECD
countries, the difference in pay between a more
experienced teacher and a new teacher is small
and there is little scope for promotion. In England,
for example, a beginning teacher earns US$32,000
while the most experienced teacher can receive, at
most, US$15,000 more. By contrast, the Republic of
Korea has a considerably steeper pay structure: a
new teacher earns a similar salary to new teachers
in England, but an experienced teacher can earn
more than twice that. In France, insufficient career
management and other inadequate teacher policies
are contributing to poor learning.
In many developing countries, teachers’ career
structures are not sufficiently linked to prospects
of promotion that recognize and reward teacher
effectiveness. In 2010, Ghana began reviewing its
teacher management and development policy to
address such concerns.
Strengthening teacher governance
Better teacher governance is vital to reduce
disadvantage in learning. If days are lost because
teachers are absent or devote more attention
to private tuition than classroom teaching, for
example, the learning of the poorest children can
be harmed. Understanding the reasons behind
these problems is crucial for the design of effective
strategies to solve them. Strong school leadership
is required to ensure that teachers show up on
time, work a full week and provide equal support
to all. Gender-based violence, which is sometimes
perpetrated by teachers, damages girls’ chances
of learning. Strategies to prevent and respond
to teacher misconduct, and take action against
perpetrators, require advocacy and support from
head teachers, teachers and their unions, as well as
communities, if girls are to be protected.
The scale of absenteeism is evident from surveys
carried out in a range of poor countries over
the past decade: in the mid-2000s, teacher
absenteeism ranged from 11% in Peru to 27% in
Uganda. Absenteeism exacerbates the problem
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
of teacher shortages. In Kenya, where the typical
primary school faces, on average, a shortage
of four teachers, 13% of teachers were absent
during school visits. Absenteeism can also affect
disadvantaged students in particular. Across India,
absenteeism varied from 15% in Maharashtra and
17% in Gujarat – two richer states – to 38% in Bihar
and 42% in Jharkhand, two of the poorest states.
Teacher absenteeism harms learning. In Indonesia,
a 10% increase in teacher absenteeism was
estimated to lead to a 7% decrease in mathematics
scores, on average, and absenteeism was most
likely to harm weaker students: the teacher absence
rate was 19% for the quarter of students with the
highest mathematics scores, and 22% for the
quarter with the lowest scores.
in breach of professional conduct, including
suspension and interdiction; new regulations state
that a teacher convicted of a sexual offence against
a pupil is to be deregistered.
Advocacy and lobbying constitute an important first
step in seeing that policies tackling gender-based
violence are in place and enforced. In Malawi, a
project lobbied successfully for revisions to codes
of conduct and stronger reporting mechanisms.
When it ran an awareness campaign, the number of
teachers who said they knew how to report a code
violation rose by over one-third.
Head teachers themselves are sometimes absent,
impeding effective monitoring of teacher attendance
and demonstrating inadequate leadership regarding
the problem. A 2011 survey of schools in Uganda
found that, on average, 21% of head teachers were
absent on the day the schools were visited.
Working directly with teacher unions is a way to
build support for taking action against teachers
who violate codes of conduct. In Kenya, the National
Union of Teachers collaborated with the Teachers’
Service Commission, Ministry of Education and
Children’s Department to help draft a parliamentary
bill that would reinforce procedures for reporting
abuse or violence by teachers and prevent
convicted teachers from simply being transferred
to other schools.
Policy-makers need to understand why teachers
miss school. In some countries, teachers are absent
because their pay is extremely low, in others because
working conditions are poor. In Malawi, where
teachers’ pay is low and payment often erratic,
1 in 10 teachers stated that they were frequently
absent from school in connection with financial
concerns, such as travelling to collect salaries
or dealing with loan payments. High rates of HIV/
AIDS can take their toll on teacher attendance.
Zambia has introduced strategies to improve living
conditions for HIV-positive teachers, including
greater access to treatment, provision of nutritional
supplements and loans.
Private tuition is another outcome of poor teacher
governance. If unchecked or uncontrolled, it can be
a detriment to learning outcomes, especially for the
poorest students who are unable to afford it. Private
tutoring by teachers is often a symptom of badly
functioning school systems and low pay that forces
teachers to supplement their income. In Cambodia,
teacher salaries are small and often paid late. One
consequence is that 13% of primary school teachers
and 87% of secondary teachers provide private
tuition. This reinforces disparities between those
who can afford fees and those who cannot. In urban
areas, grade 9 students scored 8.3 points out of 10
in Khmer with tutoring and 3.8 points without.
Gender-based violence in schools is a major barrier
to quality and equality in education. A survey in
Malawi found that around one-fifth of teachers said
they were aware of teachers coercing or forcing girls
into sexual relationships.
In Egypt, the situation has become extreme,
partly due to a decline in the quality of education
and partly because teachers need to supplement
their low income. The amount spent annually on
private tutoring is reported to be US$2.4 billion,
equivalent to 27% of government spending on
education in 2011. Private tuition is a significant
part of household education spending, averaging
47% in rural areas and 40% in urban areas. Children
from rich households are almost twice as likely as
poorer students to receive private tuition. Teachers
may be their own students’ private tutors, and thus
responsible for their grades. Students complain that
teachers do not cover the curriculum during the
school day, forcing them to take private tuition to
cover the syllabus to enable them to pass exams.
Programmes and policies addressing gender
discrimination and gender-based violence need to
protect and empower girls, challenge entrenched
practices, bring perpetrators to light and take
action against them. Legal and policy frameworks
that provide general protection for children need
to be strengthened and publicized, and teachers
need to be made aware of their own roles and
responsibilities. In Kenya, for example, a range
of penalties is available to discipline teachers
SUMMARY
In Egypt, rich
students
are almost
twice as likely
as poorer
students to
receive
private tuition
45
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Strategies should at least be in place to prevent
tutoring of pupils by teachers who are responsible
for teaching them in their daily classes. This would
ensure that full curriculum coverage is available to
all students, even those unable to afford tutoring.
In Pakistan,
36% of
grade 5
students
in private
schools
could not
read a
sentence in
English
Private schools that charge low fees are seen
by some as a way of expanding access to better
quality education for disadvantaged children where
government schools are failing. In Pakistan, a
child in a low fee private school performs better
than the average child in the top one-third of
children in government schools. However, even in
private schools, many pupils barely reach expected
competency levels. According to analysis by the
Annual State of Education Report team in Pakistan,
36% of grade 5 students in private schools could not
read a sentence in English, which they should have
been able to do by grade 2.
Learning outcomes may be better in low fee private
schools in part because lower salaries enable these
schools to hire more teachers and keep pupil/teacher
ratios low. In private schools in parts of Nairobi, there
are 15 students per teacher, compared with 80 in
government schools. Small class sizes also enable
teachers at private schools to interact more with their
students. In Andhra Pradesh, India, 82% of teachers
regularly corrected exercises given to children,
compared with only 40% in government schools.
Private school teachers are generally thought to
work under conditions of greater accountability. In
India, only one head teacher in 3,000 government
schools reported dismissing a teacher for repeated
absence. By contrast, 35 private school head
teachers, out of 600 surveyed, reported having
dismissed teachers for this reason.
46
Curriculum and assessment strategies that
improve learning
To improve learning for all children, teachers
need the support of curriculum and assessment
strategies that can reduce disparities in school
achievement and offer all children and young people
the opportunity to acquire vital transferable skills.
Such strategies need to build strong foundation
skills by starting early, moving at the right pace,
enabling disadvantaged pupils to catch up, meeting
the language needs of ethnic minorities and building
a culture of reading.
Ensuring all children acquire foundation skills
The key to ensuring that children succeed at
school is to enable them to attain critical
foundation skills, such as reading and basic
mathematics. Without these basic skills, many
children will struggle to keep up with the prescribed
curriculum, and learning disparities will widen for
disadvantaged children.
The quality of pre-school education makes a crucial
difference to children’s learning in early primary
grades. In Bangladesh, primary school children
who had attended pre-school performed better than
children without any pre-school experience in skills
relating to reading, writing and oral mathematics.
The benefits of low fee private schools do not mean
they are better per se; often their students face far
fewer disadvantages than students in government
schools. In Andhra Pradesh, over 70% of students
attending government schools belong to the
poorest 40% of households, compared with 26%
in private schools. Around one-third of teachers
in government schools are teaching students of
different ages in multigrade classrooms, compared
with 3% in private schools.
It is crucial that primary school pupils master the
foundation skills of basic numeracy and literacy in
the early grades so they can understand what is
taught in later grades, but they sometimes fail
to do so because curricula are too ambitious.
Viet Nam’s curriculum focuses on foundation skills,
is closely matched to what children are able to
learn and pays particular attention to disadvantaged
learners. By contrast, India’s curriculum, which
outpaces what pupils can realistically learn and
achieve in the time given, is a factor in widening
learning gaps. In Viet Nam, 86% of 8-year-olds
answered grade-specific test items correctly.
Similarly, 90% of children aged 8 in India did so.
However, when 14- to 15-year-olds were asked a
two-stage word problem involving multiplication
and addition, 71% of children in Viet Nam answered
correctly, while in India the percentage was 33%.
There are no excuses for students not having the
right conditions to learn: ultimately, it is vital that
all children, regardless of their background and the
type of school they attend, have the best teachers to
offer them this opportunity.
For children from ethnic and linguistic minorities
to acquire strong foundation skills, schools need
to teach the curriculum in a language children
understand. A bilingual approach that combines
continued teaching in a child’s mother tongue with
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
the introduction of a second language can
improve performance in the second language
as well as in other subjects. To reduce learning
disparities in the long term, bilingual programmes
should be sustained over several years. In
Cameroon, children taught in their local language,
Kom, showed a marked advantage in achievement
in reading and comprehension compared with
children taught only in English. Kom-educated
children also scored twice as high on mathematics
tests at the end of grade 3. However, these learning
gains were not sustained when the students
switched to English-only instruction in grade 4.
By contrast, in Ethiopia, children in regions where
local language instruction extends through to upper
primary school performed better in grade 8 subjects
than pupils taught only in English.
support children’s reading. Evaluations in Malawi,
Mozambique, Nepal and Pakistan all showed
greater learning gains by children in Literacy
Boost schools than by their peers, including
a reduction in the number of children whose
scores were zero, suggesting that the programme
benefited low achievers.
Language policies may be difficult to implement,
particularly where there is more than one
language group in the same classroom and
teachers are not proficient in the local language.
For bilingual education to be effective, governments
need to recruit and deploy teachers from minority
language groups. Initial and ongoing programmes
are also needed to train teachers to teach in
two languages and to understand the needs of
second-language learners.
Curricula need to address issues of inclusion
to enhance the chances of students from
marginalized backgrounds to learn effectively.
Where gender-responsive curricula have been
developed, as in projects in Mumbai, India, and
in Honduras, test scores measuring attitudes
on several gender-related issues improved. In
Honduras, adolescents who participated in the
project also demonstrated better problem-solving
skills and higher test scores.
For early grade literacy and bilingual education to be
successful, pupils need access to inclusive learning
materials that are relevant to their situation and in
a language they are familiar with. Open licensing
and new technology can make learning materials
more widely available, including in local languages.
In South Africa, open source educational materials
are being developed and made available in several
African languages. Digital distribution is increasing
the number of districts, schools and teachers with
access to curricular resources.
More needs to be done to design curricula that
pay attention to the needs of disabled learners. In
Canberra, Australia, curriculum reform aims to
help teachers improve student attitudes regarding
students with disabilities, improve the quality of
interactions between students with and without
disabilities, and enhance the well-being and
academic achievement of students with disabilities.
Providing appropriate reading materials may
not be enough on its own, however, to improve
children’s learning; children and families must
also be encouraged to use them. In poor or
remote communities where there is little access
to print media, providing reading materials and
supporting activities to practice reading can improve
children’s learning. Save the Children’s Literacy
Boost programme aims to improve early grade
reading skills in government schools through
interventions such as training teachers to teach
core reading skills and monitor pupils’ mastery of
them. In addition, communities are encouraged to
SUMMARY
Support outside school hours is one reason for
such success. In Pakistan, children who had
attended after-school reading camps coordinated
by community volunteers showed greater learning
gains in reading fluency and accuracy in both Pashto
and Urdu than classmates in the same schools. In
Malawi, pupils whose parents had received training
to support their children’s reading made greater
vocabulary gains than those whose parents had not.
In Canberra,
Australia,
curriculum
reform aims
to help
teachers
improve
attitudes
regarding
students
with
disabilities
Classroom-based assessment tools can help
teachers identify, monitor and support learners
at risk of low achievement. In Liberia, the EGRA
Plus project, which trained teachers in the use of
classroom-based assessment tools and provided
reading resources and scripted lesson plans to guide
instruction, raised previously low levels of reading
achievement among grade 2 and 3 pupils.
Assessments need to be aligned with the
curriculum so that they do not add significantly to
teachers’ workloads. In South Africa, well-designed
assessments with clear guidelines on how to
interpret results helped teachers with little training
who were working in difficult conditions: 80% of
teachers were able to use them in class.
47
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Students can make considerable gains if they are
offered opportunities to monitor their own learning.
In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, primary students
learn at their own pace, using self-evaluation cards
that can be administered alone or with the help
of another child; teachers strategically pair more
advanced learners with less advanced ones for
certain exercises. Overall, children’s self-confidence
has grown as a result of the approach, and learning
achievement in the state is high.
In India,
schools
with trained
female
community
volunteers
helped
increase
children’s
learning
Targeted additional support for students via trained
teaching assistants is another way of improving
learning for students at risk of falling behind.
An initial early reading intervention delivered by
teaching assistants in London schools in the United
Kingdom was found to improve reading skills and
have longer-term positive effects for children with
poor literacy skills. In India, schools with trained
female community volunteers helped increase the
proportion of children able to do two-digit addition.
While only 5% of pupils were able to carry out
simple subtraction at the start of the study, 52%
could by the end of the year, compared with 39%
in other classes.
Interactive radio instruction can lead to
improvement in learning outcomes for
disadvantaged groups by addressing barriers
such as distance and poor access to resources
and quality teachers, as identified in a review of
15 projects. The use of interactive radio can be
particularly beneficial in conflict contexts. Between
2006 and 2011, the South Sudan Interactive Radio
Instruction project enrolled over 473,000 pupils,
providing half-hour lessons linked to the national
curriculum and including instruction in English,
local language literacy, mathematics and life skills
elements such as HIV/AIDS and land mine risk
awareness. In locations that were out of range of
any radio signal, the project distributed digital
MP3 players to be used by trained teachers.
Digital classrooms can complement classes
given by less qualified teachers. In India, the
Digital Study Hall project provides digital video
recordings of live classes taught by expert
teachers, which are shown by DVD in rural and
slum schools. An evaluation of four schools in
Uttar Pradesh found that, after eight months,
72% of pupils had improved test scores.
Innovation in the use of technology can help improve
learning by enriching teachers’ curriculum delivery
and encouraging flexibility in pupil learning. Greater
48
access to computers in schools can also help
reduce the digital divide between low and high
income groups. However, new technology is not a
substitute for good teaching.
Teachers’ ability to use ICT as an educational
resource plays a critical role in improving learning.
A study in Brazil found that the introduction of
computer laboratories in schools had a negative
impact on student performance, but that teachers’
use of the Internet as a pedagogical resource
supported innovative classroom teaching and
learning, resulting in improved test scores.
Children from low income groups are less likely
to have experience of ICT outside school and may
thus take longer to adapt to it and need additional
support. In Rwanda, 79% of students who used
computers in secondary school had previously used
ICT and the Internet outside school (primarily in
Internet cafés). However, girls and rural children
were at a disadvantage because they were less
likely to have access to Internet cafés or other ICT
resources in their communities.
One promising way of increasing the
accessibility of ICT for teaching and learning
is ‘mobile learning’ – the use of mobile phones
and other portable electronic devices, such as
MP3 players. In rural India, an after-school
programme for children from low income families
used mobile phone games to help them learn
English. This resulted in significant learning gains
in tests of the spelling of common English nouns,
particularly for children in higher grades who had
stronger foundation skills.
Where children are learning little and dropping
out early, second-chance programmes can teach
foundation skills through a shorter cycle of
learning, which is one way of accelerating children’s
progress and raising achievement for disadvantaged
groups. Several such accelerated learning
programmes raise achievement for disadvantaged
groups in less time than formal government
schools, allowing them the opportunity to
catch up and to re-enter formal schools. They
usually benefit from small classes and teachers
speaking the local language recruited from
surrounding communities. In northern Ghana,
for example, 46% of those who had attended an
accelerated learning programme and re-entered
primary school attained grade-appropriate levels in
grade 4, compared with 34% of other students.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Formal primary schools can also use accelerated
learning programmes in situations where large
proportions of students are over-age for their
grade. In Brazil, over-age students in grades 5 to
8 were taught a substantially modified curriculum,
covering more than one grade in a year. Overall,
schools’ share of students with a two-year age
grade gap was reduced from 46% in 1998 to 30%
in 2003. Once the students were restored to the
right grade for their age, they were able to maintain
their performance and their promotion rates in
secondary school were comparable with those of
other students.
SUMMARY
Beyond the basics: transferable skills for
global citizenship
Curricula need to ensure that all children and
young people learn not just foundation skills,
but also transferable skills, such as critical
thinking, problem-solving, advocacy and
conflict-resolution, to help them become
responsible global citizens. An interdisciplinary
approach involving hands-on, locally relevant
educational activities can also develop students’
understanding of the environment and build
skills to promote sustainable development.
© Hugo Infante/UNESCO
Between 1999 and 2004, Germany introduced
an interdisciplinary programme that fostered
participatory learning and provided opportunities
for students to work together on innovative
projects for sustainable living. An evaluation found
that participants had a greater understanding of
sustainable development than their peers, and
up to 80% of the students said they had gained
transferable skills. In South Africa, an initiative
links the curriculum to practical actions such as
adopting recycling systems and water harvesting
in schools, using alternative energy sources for
cooking, cleaning up public spaces, creating
indigenous gardens and planting trees. Participating
schools have reported increased environmental
awareness and improved sustainability practices at
school and in homes.
Empowering children through communication and
advocacy can help them reduce their vulnerability
to environmental risk. In the Philippines, which
is prone to environmental disasters, a strong
commitment to integrating disaster risk reduction
into education has led children to take an active
role in making their communities safer.
The Philippines
has integrated
disaster risk
reduction into
education
Programmes that emphasize inclusion and conflict
resolution can also help bolster individuals’ rights
and build peace. In Burundi in 2009, secondary
schools taught communication and conflict
mediation skills to help returning refugees.
After two years, trained teachers had abandoned
corporal punishment, issues of sexual abuse and
corruption were more easily debated, relationships
had improved among pupils, their peers and their
teachers, and pupils were acting as mediators
in the resolution of minor conflicts at school and
in the community.
49
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
Unlocking teachers’ potential to
solve the learning crisis
This Report identifies the 10 most important teaching reforms that policy-makers
should adopt to achieve equitable learning for all.
1
Fill teacher gaps
On current trends, some countries will not be able
to meet their primary school teacher needs by 2030.
The challenge is even greater for other levels of
education. Thus, countries need to activate policies
that begin to address the vast shortfall.
2
Attract the best candidates to teaching
It is important for all children to have teachers
with at least a good secondary-level qualification.
Therefore, governments should invest in improving
access to quality secondary education to enlarge
the pool of good teacher candidates. This reform is
particularly important if the pool of better-educated
female teachers is to increase in disadvantaged
areas. In some countries, this will mean introducing
affirmative measures to attract more women
into teaching.
Policy-makers also need to focus their
attention on hiring and training teachers from
under-represented groups, such as ethnic
minorities, to serve in their own communities.
Such teachers, familiar with the cultural
context and local language, can improve learning
opportunities for disadvantaged children.
3
Train teachers to meet the needs of all children
All teachers need to receive training to enable
them to meet the learning needs of all children.
Before teachers enter the classroom, they should
undergo good quality pre-service teacher education
programmes that provide a balance between
knowledge of the subjects to be taught and
knowledge of teaching methods.
50
Pre-service teacher education should also make
adequate classroom teaching experience an
essential part of training to become a qualified
teacher. It should equip teachers with practical
skills to teach children to read and to understand
basic mathematics. In ethnically diverse societies,
teachers should learn to teach in more than one
language. Teacher education programmes should
also prepare teachers to teach multiple grades
and ages in one classroom, and to understand how
teachers’ attitudes to gender differences can affect
learning outcomes.
Ongoing training is vital for every teacher to develop
and strengthen teaching skills. It can also provide
teachers with new ideas to support weak learners,
especially in the early grades, and help teachers
adapt to changes such as a new curriculum.
Innovative approaches such as distance teacher
education, combined with face-to-face training
and mentoring, should also be encouraged so as
to extend both pre-service and ongoing teacher
education to greater numbers of teachers.
4 Prepare teacher educators and mentors to
support teachers
To ensure that teachers have the best training to
improve learning for all children, it is important for
those who train teachers to have knowledge and
experience of real classroom teaching challenges
and how to tackle them. Policy-makers should
thus make sure teacher educators are trained
and have adequate exposure to the classroom
learning requirements facing those teaching in
difficult circumstances.
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
To enable newly qualified teachers to translate
teaching knowledge into activities that improve
learning for all children, policy-makers should
provide for trained mentors to help them achieve
this transition.
5
Get teachers to where they are needed most
Governments need to ensure that the best teachers
are not only recruited and trained, but also deployed
to the areas where they are most needed. Adequate
compensation, bonus pay, good housing and
support in the form of professional development
opportunities should be used to encourage
trained teachers to accept positions in rural or
disadvantaged areas. In addition, governments
should recruit teachers locally and provide
them with ongoing training so that all children,
irrespective of their location, have teachers who
understand their language and culture and thus
can improve their learning.
6 Use a competitive career and pay structure to
retain the best teachers
Governments should ensure that teachers earn
at least enough to lift their families above the
poverty line and make their pay competitive with
comparable professions. Performance-related
pay has intuitive appeal as a way to motivate
teachers to improve learning. However, it can
be a disincentive to teach students who achieve
less well, have learning difficulties or live in poor
communities. Instead, an attractive career and pay
structure should be used as an incentive for all
teachers to improve their performance. It can also
be used to recognize and reward teachers in remote
areas and those who support the learning
of disadvantaged children.
Improve teacher governance to maximize
impact
7
Governments should improve governance policies
to address the problems of teacher misconduct
such as absenteeism, tutoring their students
privately and gender-based violence in schools.
Governments can also do more to address teacher
absenteeism by improving teachers’ working
conditions, making sure they are not overburdened
with non-teaching duties and offering them access
to good health care. Strong school leadership is
required to ensure that teachers show up on time,
SUMMARY
work a full week and provide equal support to
all. School leaders also need training in offering
professional support to teachers.
Governments need to work closely with teacher
unions and teachers to formulate policies and adopt
codes of conduct to tackle unprofessional behaviour
such as gender-based violence. Codes of practice
should refer clearly to violence and abuse, making
penalties consistent with legal frameworks for child
rights and protection.
Where private tutoring by teachers is prevalent,
explicit guidelines, backed up with legislation, so
that teachers do not sacrifice classroom time to
teach the school curriculum privately are needed.
8 Equip teachers with innovative curricula to
improve learning
Teachers need the support of inclusive and flexible
curriculum strategies designed to meet the learning
needs of children from disadvantaged groups.
Equipped with the appropriate curriculum content
and delivery methods, teachers can reduce learning
disparities, allowing low achievers to catch up.
Policy-makers should ensure that early grade
curricula focus on securing strong foundation
skills for all and are delivered in a language
children understand. It is important for curriculum
expectations to match learners’ abilities, as
overambitious curricula limit what teachers can
achieve in helping children progress.
Getting out-of-school children back into school and
learning is vital. Governments and donor agencies
should support second-chance accelerated learning
programmes to achieve this goal.
In many countries, radio, television, computers and
mobile technologies are being used to supplement
and improve children’s learning. Teachers in both
formal and non-formal settings need to be given
skills to maximize the benefits of technology in ways
that help narrow the digital divide.
It is not sufficient for children to learn foundation
skills in school. A curriculum that promotes
interdisciplinary and participatory learning, and
fosters skills for global citizenship, is vital for
teachers to help children develop transferable skills.
51
SUMMARY
E D U C AT I O N F O R A L L G LO B A L M O N I T O R I N G R E P O R T 2 0 1 3 / 4
9 Develop classroom assessments to help
teachers identify and support students at risk of
not learning
Classroom-based assessments are vital tools
to identify and help learners who are struggling.
Teachers need to be trained to use them so that
they can detect learning difficulties early and use
appropriate strategies to tackle these difficulties.
Providing children with learning materials to
evaluate their own progress, and training teachers
to support their use, can help children make great
strides in learning. Targeted additional support
via trained teaching assistants or community
volunteers is another key way of improving learning
for students at risk of falling behind.
10
Conclusion
To end the learning crisis, all countries, rich and
poor, have to ensure that every child has access
to a well-trained and motivated teacher. The 10
strategies outlined here are based on the evidence
of successful policies, programmes, strategies
from a wide range of countries and educational
environments. By implementing these reforms,
countries can ensure that all children and young
people, especially the disadvantaged, receive the
good quality education they need to realize their
potential and lead fulfilling lives.
Provide better data on trained teachers
More and better data on teacher salaries in low
and middle income countries are also needed to
enable national governments and the international
community to monitor how well teachers are
paid and to raise global awareness of the need
to pay them well.
52
© Eva-Lotta Jansson/UNESCO
Countries should invest in collecting and analysing
annual data on the number of trained teachers
available throughout the country, including
characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and
disability, at all levels of education. These data
should be complemented by information on the
capacity of teacher education programmes,
with an assessment of the competencies
teachers are expected to acquire. Internationally
agreed standards need to be established for
teacher education programmes so that their
comparability is ensured.
TEACHING AND LEARNING:
Achieving quality for all
The 2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report shows that a lack of attention to education
quality and a failure to reach the marginalized have contributed to a learning crisis that needs urgent
attention. Worldwide, 250 million children – many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds – are not
learning the basics, let alone the further skills they need to get decent work and lead fulfilling lives.
Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all describes how policy-makers can support and sustain
a quality education system for all children, regardless of background, by providing the best teachers.
The Report also documents the reductions in aid that are holding back progress towards education
goals, and shows how countries can boost education funding by tapping into domestic resources more
effectively.
As the international community prepares to formulate post-2015 development goals, the Report
makes a compelling case for giving education a central place in the global framework. It presents the
latest evidence from around the world of the power of education – especially of girls – to help improve
health and nutrition, reduce poverty, boost economic growth and protect the environment.
The Education for All Global Monitoring Report was established in order to inform, influence and sustain
genuine commitment to achieving the Education for All goals by 2015. The Report monitors progress
towards the goals across some 200 countries and territories, and acts as an authoritative reference
for education policy-makers, development specialists, researchers and the media.
I chose to be a teacher because
I believe that education has the
power to transform the society
we live in. What motivates me
to be a good teacher is to be an
active agent in this change that
is so necessary for my country,
to fight against discrimination,
injustice, racism, corruption and
poverty. Our responsibility as
teachers is enormous, and our
commitment to provide quality
education must be renewed
every day.
– Ana, teacher, Peru
What motivates me to become a good
teacher is to be able to impart my
gift to make a difference in the life of
another person. It is the fulfilment
of being able to inspire others to find
their own identities and be the best of
who they are.
– Lea, teacher, Philippines
I believe everyone has a right to
education: to be literate, numerate and
critical; to enjoy learning for learning’s
sake. I believe everyone has a right to
a job and self-sufficiency and that they
need the education to do that. I believe
anything less than my best means that
the above things cannot happen.
– Laura, teacher, United Kingdom
What motivates me is knowing that
I have the power to transform the
somewhat predetermined lives of
the poorest classes of my country. I
see education as the only tool to help
them all, and as the only valid way to
achieve a ‘good life’.
I consider myself a good teacher
because I had good teachers, and
I have been successful in my own
studies and career. I figure that
if someone taught me to be this
successful, I can use the same passion
and skills to help others.
– Darwin, teacher, Ecuador
– Fwanshishak, teacher, Nigeria
UNESCO
Publishing
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Educational, Scientific and
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